Thresholder

“Alright,” said Perry with a sigh once Liv was gone. “Check for bugs?”

“Bugs, sir?” asked Marchand.

“Listening devices,” said Perry.

“Oh no, sir, I’m afraid I wouldn’t want to give you false confidence,” said Marchand. “While I am gifted with superlative abilities in signal processing, they are only best in class given my relatively limited processing power and the lack of a dedicated sensor apparatus.”

“See if you can find anything,” said Perry. “I’ll assume that anything I type into the keyboard is logged, but it would be good to get whatever information they’re willing to feed me.”

“Yes, sir,” said Marchand. “Based on their level of technical knowledge, it would be fairly trivial for them to craft a port to my specifications. They seem to prefer physical interfaces, perhaps because their wireless technology is subpar.”

Perry frowned. “It is? You said there was heavy encryption.”

“There is, sir,” replied Marchand. “Might I share an observation with you?”

“Of course, go ahead,” said Perry.

“Microchip fabrication is quite difficult,” said Marchand. “What you call integrated circuits are made using a process that —”

“I am familiar, yes,” said Perry.

“Very well, sir,” said Marchand. “May I list some of the requirements for a microchip fabrication facility?”

“Yeah, sure, go for it,” said Perry.

“Microchip fabrication requires ultra-clean conditions, nanometer scale alignment, delicate tools, large amounts of energy, ultra-pure water, skilled technicians, precisely controlled climate, maintenance, calibration, and access to a steady stream of raw materials,” said March. “All of those would be quite difficult aboard the Natrix.”

“Sure,” said Perry. “So … what did she say, two hundred cycles or so for the cold edge to become the hot edge? That’s like half a year to set up shop and start spitting out chips.”

“Sir, half a year is considered the minimum time span necessary for qualification of a fabrication facility,” said March.

“They’re using some amount of child labor,” said Perry. “They don’t have red tape to cut through, they don’t need to worry about labor conditions or overtime, except as far as it interferes with their goals. I mean, they’re war-time, full production, you still think that they couldn’t produce chips? Or what are you saying?”

“It’s very possible they couldn’t produce microchips, sir,” said Marchand. “But the challenges are nothing like they are on Earth, so it’s difficult to say.”

“Do you think they stole these chips?” asked Perry. “Any signs of other settlements, ships, things like that?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t like to speculate, sir,” said Marchand. “It is also possible that I have misjudged some of their requirements.”

Perry frowned. He looked down at the keyboard, then up at the monitor, which she’d called a terminal. “How so?”

“To pilot a ‘mech’ seems to me as though it would require quite a lot of processing power,” replied Marchand. “But it might be possible that they simply write their programs more efficiently to make up for the lack of circuitry, sir.”

“That seems very likely,” said Perry, thinking back to the code that Brigitta had been working on. “I’m stepping back out of the armor, you’ll help me with the terminal?”

“Yes, sir, though there is one other matter that I believe we should discuss,” said Marchand.

“What is it?” asked Perry. He knew it was stupid, but he didn’t like Marchand’s tone of voice.

“Miss Richter believed that you would be traveling from world to world,” said Marchand. “She didn’t have time to finish all the setup she thought would be necessary, but she did record a video message, which was to be played when you connected to a new global computer network. Obviously in the framing of ‘worlds’ as I now understand it, the last two worlds had no such thing, and arguably this world doesn’t either, given that the Natrix is not, in any sense, global, but —”

“You have a message for me?” asked Perry. His heart was beating quickly in his chest. “From Richter?”

“Yes, sir, and while I do not believe I’ve fully satisfied the conditions of her —”

“Play it for me,” said Perry.

The response was immediate, his vision taken up by Richter in her basement lab, tools around her. She was in a tank top and her underwear, both pale blue, and she was smiling.

“Alright!” she said with a smile. “If you’re watching this, it means that a portal opened up and you went to another Earth without me! Or maybe it means I miscalibrated March and you’re getting this while we’re doing some deep sea diving together. Anyway, this is my just-in-case, a cheeky way to get the last word in, assuming that you aren’t secretly doing the same.”

She grinned, and Perry’s heart melted. It had been some time since he’d looked at the old videos of her, which he had worn through during his time in Seraphinus. She was beautiful, with bouncy brown hair and faint smile lines, bouncy movements. Her eyes were a startling green, and she’d joked that it was bespoke retroviral gene therapy that got them like that, which he wasn't entirely sure was a joke.

“So, we’ve split up, that’s a shame, but I get it. You never really did explain to me why you went through that portal, but maybe you’re just a portal guy, you know?” She bit her lip. “Perry the Portal Guy. I hope you had a chance to take your armor with you, but if you’re watching this, then yeah, you did. Or I misconfigured it. There’s a very good chance I misconfigure it or Marchand misunderstands.”

She shook her head. “So what do I want to say to the Perry that left? Thanks for the memories, for the look at another world, for the sex, for the conversation, for all that. I don’t mind that you ran off with a multi-million dollar power armor, really. Take care of Marchand for me.” She was silent for a moment, just looking at her own image on the screen below the camera. Perry could imagine it, her standing there. This must have been before Mordant showed up. “It’s anxiety, I think, imagining you gone, thinking about you going and me never getting to say goodbye, so I’m recording a message that tries to make up for that? Like the anxiety will go away if there’s a message on a hard drive I can believe you might get some day.”

She leaned forward slightly. “I kind of loved you. I know that we don’t know each other well enough for me to say that, we come from different worlds in a lot of ways, but whatever, if you’re not coming back, then it doesn’t matter. I love you.” She stuck her tongue out between her teeth. “So I guess I hope you don’t leave.” She leaned back. “And if you do leave, then a few months were all we had together, and I can live with that, but you had better make the most of the world out there. Figure it all out, you know? Not just the stuff with the portals and multiverse, but with people. I know we’ve talked about it, but think about all the A/B testing you could do with two parallel worlds, right? We could get some answers to all the big questions, sociology, psychology, the movement of people and nations, we wouldn’t have to guess so much. If you left without me, for whatever reason, then I’m sorry to say, that all falls on your shoulders.”

She reached forward to turn off the camera or pause the recording, then stopped herself. “Wait, one more thing.” She lifted up her shirt, showing her bare chest, then said, “Tits!”, giggled, and shut the camera off.

The view switched back to the penthouse room atop the Natrix.

Perry felt hollow. It was like a slap to the face, a warm, loving message from someone dead, a reminder of that loss that brought him back to all the dark days in Seraphinus. He’d torn through an army with the weight of that grief behind him.

“I apologize for not sharing that video sooner, sir,” said Marchand. “I had some discretion in the matter, and believe now it might have been wise to —”

“It’s fine,” said Perry, though it wasn’t. “You’re just following your programming. I’m getting out of the armor, some rest is in order.”

March was silent as Perry took the armor off again.

Free from the armor, Perry moved around the room, taking in his living quarters.

Maybe the way rich people lived would always converge on certain styles. It didn’t seem that different from other high-end places he had seen, with an emphasis on labor and materials. He’d briefly dated a rich girl who thought nothing of the uptown apartment her father paid for, and it hadn’t seemed so incredibly distant from how the king of Seraphinus had lived. But Richter had been rich, and hadn’t really lived like that. She had a nice house, a large one, but not a place that screamed wealth with the trappings of opulence.

He walked out onto the terrace. Even this high up, the motion of the machine wasn’t all that noticeable.

He could have easily left, if he wanted to, and gone out into the world on his own. There were bugs, sure, but he was second sphere, and that meant that with some time and practice, he could figure out how to go without food, water, sleep, air, all that. His meridians were all messed up, and he could feel the Wolf Vessel still lodged in March, but he didn’t think that it would necessarily stop him from reaching the peaks of the second sphere. Really, he had only just barely scratched the surface.

He could feel the meridians, stretching away from him, tugging gently at the Wolf Vessel, present but not unpleasant, and he moved away from them, seeing whether they would stretch or go into tension. They didn’t, which was confusing, but they weren’t physical things, they were metaphysical things.

He stared out at the world as it went by, clenching his teeth slightly and feeling the movement of energy through his body. He wasn’t feeling the effects of radiation poisoning, thank god, and hoped that he had gotten out of the space station in time.

Richter. Still there, in the past, waiting for a rescue that seemed further away every day, not closer.

It was a new world, and he had a base of operations, and some people who wanted to use him for their own purposes. Most of what they could offer him seemed to be in the way of armaments, though he was a little skeptical about that, and their tech level seemed to be lower than Richter had been working with, albeit there had to be something strange about either these people or their conditions. It was entirely possible that they were all savants, in which case it was they could do an upgrade to March — the armor, not the code that made up the AI, which he had already decided he would probably not allow them to touch. If they could get the microfusion reactor working again, then that would be for the best, but he didn’t want to expose them to the technology in case it led to some unforeseen consequences.

He needed to work on academics. His tether was already healthy, just from a baseline level of looking around at things, but he knew he could do better. He didn’t have the engineering chops to take a lot of lessons from what they were doing, but he could take some social lessons, and maybe figure out what was different about their brains, if anything.

If he was going to have some time, it would be spent untangling his meridians and moving everything back into place, and once that was done, if it could be done, Perry would work on learning techniques that could be used with March. He’d figure out how to use the misplaced Wolf Vessel, and if he could still transform, or at least funnel energy with it.

Laying it all out felt like progress, somehow, though he’d accomplished nothing of note.

He owed it to Richter to make some progress, to push the borders of his own abilities, to claw as much power as he could from this place and all the others.

Of the mysteries of this world, he was going to have to wait on Brigitta to tell him a story, and then he would have to hope he got in a position to confirm it. There had been a transfer of power, it only remained to be seen how bloodless it had actually been. This room had a previous owner, and they were gone now.

Of the mysteries of the many worlds, Perry was going to have to be much more proactive than he had been. These people knew nothing, but there would be another thresholder out there somewhere, sooner or later if they hadn’t landed already. He would get what he could from them, and if the fates allowed it, he’d steal what he could of their powers. He’d engaged in trade with Maya, boosting them both, and he imagined that was a possibility for enemies too.

Somewhere, there had to be a starting point to punching a hole through the multiverse without the use of a portal. The best thing that Perry could do for himself was to gain as much power as possible. He would be the cleaving sword, the speeding bullet, the claw that ripped things to shreds.

~~~~

When Perry’s thoughts had calmed, he returned to the room.

The terminal felt clunky, and not just because Perry was using an unfamiliar keyboard to navigate through unfamiliar menus. It wasn’t as responsive as Perry remembered his phone being, and it was a far sight from what March was capable of.

“I can help you, sir,” said Marchand. “If you would like, I could put indicators for your fingers on the HUD, were you wearing the helmet.”

“Is it that obvious that it’s a painful experience for me?” asked Perry.

“Unfortunately so, sir,” said Marchand.

“If I set the armor up, could you just articulate the fingers on the keyboard and do all the navigation for me?” asked Perry.

“I suppose I could, sir, though the armor isn’t designed to operate without a pilot, sir,” said Marchand. “A large part of my role is in amplification, which is really hardly any trouble at all. But even aside from the processing power required, there are questions of balance and stability, a lack of sensor feedback, and of course, the ever-important human-in-the-loop.”

“But it’s fine for the fingers?” asked Perry. He’d heard most of that speech before, some of it from Richter. There were, apparently, very different design goals if you wanted a full robot capable of moving around on its own. He wasn’t entirely sure it was impossible to transform March into that. There were definitely times it would have been useful to have a team of two instead of a single amplified person.

“For the fingers, I suppose it should be fine,” said Marchand. “I am, after all, only communicating with another computer, or set of computers, something I’m expected to do on my own.”

“I’ll set you up,” said Perry.

This took some time, and then the armor was sitting in the chair, ‘wrists’ resting on the desk. It looked faintly ridiculous to Perry, but after a bit of calibration on March’s part, the fingers started moving. The unnerving thing was that the body was perfectly still, slumped back. It called to mind Weekend at Bernie’s, though Perry had only seen the trailer.

“Our access seems to be quite limited,” said March after a time. “There are forums, but the majority of the conversation is locked for someone with our role. Similarly, we have access to a request system, but our options are limited. They have thankfully not gone for complete opacity, instead allowing us to know that the options are simply unavailable.”

“Options like what?” asked Perry.

“Food, cleaning, items,” said Marchand. “There are schedulable services as well, and it appears you’ve been set up with a calendar, as well as access to their messaging system.”

“You said there was a forum,” said Perry.

“A forum, and e-mail,” said Marchand. “The implementations differ somewhat from what I’m used to. It’s difficult to tell whether there’s any expectation of privacy.”

“We don’t know anyone we’d want to send a message to,” said Perry. “I guess Liv or Brigitta, but I’m not sending an eleven-year-old a DM.” He knew, on some level, that this was irrational, but he didn’t like being around children that young.

“She’s actually twelve, sir,” said Marchand. “There appears to be a public directory, I’m compiling the information now … and have finished with the compiling.”

“Average age?” asked Perry.

“Sixteen, sir,” said Marchand.

“What the fuck,” said Perry.

“From the demographics I have access to, the issue is not one of mortality, but rather, a deliberate strategy of population increase,” said March.

“You’re telling me that the average person aboard the Natrix is a child?” asked Perry.

“Yes, sir,” replied Marchand.

“And that this was deliberate in order to …” said Perry, trailing off. “Fulfill the work of generations.”

“Perhaps, sir, though it doesn’t do to speculate,” said Marchand.

Perry looked down at the fingers of the suit, which were still clacking away at the strange keyboard. The monitor was flickering with text, which never stayed up for long. “What are you doing now?”

“There are significant educational resources, sir,” said Marchand. “I’m digesting them.”

“Tell me if you find anything,” said Perry.

“I am currently looking at instructions given on the programming language they use, sir, and have finished with that presently,” said Marchand. “There are two programming languages in use aboard the Natrix, with all others having been phased out in the recent past, undocumented here, though I have partially reconstructed two of the historical ones based on the information we had taken from the space station.”

“Why?” asked Perry. “The reconstruction, why was that important?”

“The Natrix has incredibly high power requirements, sir,” said Marchand. “The technology we have seen so far is relatively primitive, incapable of meeting those demands on a mobile ship of this size. Further, from my cursory view of the internals of the mechs, particularly the two we’ve ridden on, it appears that they have high-capacity batteries and minimal internal power generation, though it’s difficult to be certain. And I have confirmed to my satisfaction that this is a terminal connected to a quite powerful computer system, of which the Natrix has only a few.”

“Say it in English, doc,” said Perry.

“The conclusion, I believe, is that the Natrix runs largely off of technology from the space station which the people here are incapable of reproducing,” said Marchand. “That would mean that the archaic programming languages are still in use, and given the poor security on the space station, it’s possible there exists an avenue of attack through legacy code.”

“Er,” said Perry. “That’s not really a thing we’re planning.”

“No, sir,” said Marchand. “We are, of course, guests of the Natrix, and I believe there is a good possibility for alliance here.”

Perry waited in silence. “But,” he said.

“But if alliance proves impossible, or I were to be captured, or you were to decide on a course of violence, then it would be good to prepare ahead of time,” said Marchand.

Perry nodded slowly. “Don’t do anything without my say so.”

“Anything, sir?” asked Marchand.

“You know what I mean,” said Perry.

“I’m afraid I don’t, sir,” said Marchand. The fingers had kept moving through this whole conversation, typing away at the console, exploring every inch of the system that was available to them without bypassing their security. He hoped it was without bypassing their security, anyway.

“Don’t hurt these people,” said Perry. “Don’t blow up an ancient reactor or something like that, not unless … unless I tell you to directly, I guess, but I can’t imagine that I would ever say that. It would doom nine thousand people to death.”

“Very good sir, I’ll make the plans just in case then, shall I?” asked Marchand.

“Fine,” said Perry. “But be ready to delete those plans, okay?”

“Yes, sir, though I should note that my security far surpasses anything I’ve seen from these people,” said Marchand.

“You said that you couldn’t be sure this room wasn’t being listened in on,” said Perry.

“Ah, in the time since I’ve said that, I’ve come to the conclusion that their ability to listen to conversations is actually quite restricted,” said Marchand. “And I have done everything in my power to ensure that listening devices would be disabled.”

“Run a diagnostic,” said Perry. He was frowning. “Full system.”

“Yes, sir, of course,” replied Marchand.

Perry had wanted more initiative, but this seemed like something else. March had never been so adaptive or so smart, though this environment was much more like the one that March had been designed for. March’s confusion about magic and kung fu and feudal society was very understandable, but still, it didn’t seem like the circumstances should have made that much of a difference. March had been more intelligent when connected to the cloud back on Richter’s world, but there wasn’t any additional processing power here.

“I have a preliminary report of issues, sir,” said Marchand some moments later. “I believe the full report will take quite a few hours, but there are numerous items which have been suppressed for one reason or another which I’m quite eager to talk with you about.”

“Alright,” said Perry. “Lay it on me.”

“To start with, sir, there have been persistent issues with the microfusion reactor, which as you know is the most vital part of the armor,” said Marchand. “For a time my assessment was that it had been irreparably damaged, but a trickle of power still seemed to be sporadically produced by it, which meant that the sensor complex and control machinery were giving false signals. However, since arriving on the space station, it appears that the reactor is functioning normally, though still with significant problems with both the sensor complex and the control machinery.”

“Right,” said Perry. “But you’re getting steady power? As though the microfusion reactor were there?”

“Yes, sir,” said Marchand. “In fact, the power available appears to be quite a bit higher than the microfusion reactor is rated for, which I have no explanation for. I have verified that this is not a figment or hallucination.”

“You can hallucinate?” asked Perry.

“Oh yes, sir,” said Marchand.

“Is that recent, or?” asked Perry.

“No, sir, there’s a significant body of work related to hallucination,” said Marchand. “I can provide papers for you to read, if you’d like.”

“Not necessary,” said Perry. “Microfusion reactor, something is funky with it, got it. How’s processing?”

“There are similar issues with processing,” said Marchand.

“Er,” said Perry. “There are?”

“Yes, sir,” said Marchand. “I won’t bore you with the technical details I expect you don’t have the interest or background to understand, but processing power is distributed across the armor and done in parallel where possible. I have observed a number of phantoms within the processing superstructure.”

“What the hell does that mean?” asked Perry. “You’re hallucinating and seeing ghosts?”

“Oh, no sir,” said Marchand. “Hallucination is quite different, a result of the learning algorithms, and a known problem. This phantom processing is a problem which I believe is quite unknown, though I would need to connect with my world’s global computer network in order to be entirely sure. What I have observed are various input streams which have no identifiable source, as though additional processing is coming from an unknown piece of the distributed computing structure which I cannot verify exists.”

“And how long has that been going on?” asked Perry.

“It’s unclear, sir,” said Marchand. “I have been unable to furnish a satisfactory answer for what is happening or why.” There was a long pause. “I am confident that there is an answer to be found within the bounds of common sense and physics, but I fear that you might be about to say that it’s magic.”

Perry considered this. “It might be magic.”

“Sir,” said Marchand with a pronounced frown that could be heard only in his voice, as March didn’t actually have lips or a face.

“Look, you can accept that we’re traveling between worlds,” said Perry. “Then you should also be able, in principle, to accept that there’s mystical energy flowing through you which is responsible for the flow of literal energy, but also maybe computation, if on the base level there are, I don’t know, ones and zeros moving through the pipes or whatever.”

“Your understanding of the technical details astounds me, sir,” said Marchand.

“Whatever, you get it, magic,” said Perry.

“You believe that ‘magic’ is sending encoded cognition to and from phantom ports, sir?” asked Marchand.

“I mean,” said Perry. “You’re sure it’s not the nanites?”

“Quite certain, sir,” said Marchand. “I shall continue searching for an explanation, sir. Shall I continue with the report?”

“Fine, go ahead,” said Perry.

The rest held no particular surprises though. It could all be explained by magic in one way or another. The suit had been repaired using mystical martial arts, which March couldn’t account for. March was particularly troubled by the sword, whose acceleration didn’t fit in with the models that March was using. Annoyingly, even after Perry had explained the exact function of the sword, March refused to update. It seemed that acknowledging that they had traveled worlds was as far as he was willing to go. Even when Perry had tried lying and saying that the sword was some unknown technology capable of inducing weightlessness, March had some quite piercing questions that Perry couldn’t adequately answer.

Perry was settling into some more work correcting his vessels and meridians when there was a chime from his door.

It was Brigitta, and Perry found himself happy to see her after so much time talking to the robot. She had changed clothes and probably taken another shower, as her hair was wet. She had on a tight white t-shirt and a black bra visible beneath it, and she wore long tan pants with a high waist, loose-fitting around the legs.

“Hello,” she said with a smile. Her eyes went to Marchand, who was sitting at the desk, fingers still at the keyboard. “Ah?”

“Just a project,” said Perry. “If I ask, it can type for me, saves me from figuring out the keyboard.” It felt deeply wrong to call March and ‘it’, but Perry was going to continue that deception for at least as long as it took to make sure there was nothing like a compulsive fear of semi-autonomous AI.

Brigitta raised an eyebrow.

“How was your sewage problem?” asked Perry.

“Fixed,” said Brigitta with a wave of her hand. “But then there were a dozen other things, as it goes. I’d left too much to coast on without me.” She looked around the penthouse with a touch of disdain, but brightened back up when she turned back to Perry. “How are you finding your new home?”

“I don’t need all this,” said Perry. “I’d rather bunk down with the engineers, or with Ops, or with people who do the actual work. Treat me like one of your mech pilots.”

“It makes you uncomfortable?” she asked.

“Yes,” nodded Perry. “You’re living on the knife edge of survival, this is … not the work of generations.”

“No,” said Brigitta. “It’s not.” She seemed satisfied with his answer. “But we will keep you here for now, all the same.”

“The person whose room this used to be, were they someone important?” asked Perry. All the rooms on the level were empty too, he was pretty sure.

“Yes,” nodded Brigitta.

“Someone who is now dead?” asked Perry.

“No,” said Brigitta. “Deposed, not dead.” She moved to the desk where Marchand sat and touched the wood there. It wasn’t quite wood as Perry had known it, maybe something closer to bamboo, epoxied or varnished to a shine. “They share bunks with the children now.”

“As punishment?” asked Perry. “Retribution?”

Brigitta nodded, then turned to Perry. “I put you here for a reason,” she said. “It’s a sign of respect, but it also keeps you out of the way.”

“You said that you had other allies or friends or something, people in charge of this … landship,” said Perry. “Do I get to meet them?”

“Soon,” said Brigitta with a shrug. “I’ve talked to them about you, and what promise you might bring. You are my department, they agree.”

“Huh,” said Perry. “So you’re going to tell me all about what’s going on, right? You promised that you would.”

“Yes,” said Brigitta with an eager nod. She looked at March at the terminal. “How does this work?”

“We’re going to divert to that?” asked Perry. He found it charming though, in spite of himself. She had started to flag a little bit when they’d been in quarantine together, but she was chipper again, her mood having swung back toward eager and excited.

“Yes,” said Brigitta.

“How would you guess it works?” asked Perry.

Brigitta frowned at the setup. “It seems complicated,” she said. “In broad strokes … you speak, there is waveform matching, each waveform becomes a glyph … but the glyphs don’t match to spelling, so a mapping would be required.” She tapped her lips and turned to Perry. “We speak the same language, but not perfectly, and the keyboard shouldn’t be the same, should it? So how was it done?”

“That’s how you’d solve it, if you had to?” asked Perry.

“No,” said Brigitta. “I only gave a partial solution, the problem of translating the sound of your voice into a specific letter on the keyboard, missing the full complexity of even that half of the problem. The full solution would require articulation, movements of motors or whatever is in there to position each finger above the correct key, then more logic, specific to each finger, each key, in order to depress the finger and push the key. It is insanity, which is why I think you did it some other way.”

“It’s a secret,” said Perry. He grinned at her. “Sorry.”

“You’re no engineer,” said Brigitta. “And you came unprepared, so it can’t be that you had the general solution.” She was frowning at him. “You’re being a tease.” She pouted in a flirty way, though he had no doubt she really did want to know the answer.

“I was promised some answers, or as good as promised,” said Perry. “I had a look at your manifest. You have lots and lots of children on the Natrix.”

“Mmm,” said Brigitta. She moved around the desk to stand next to March, and ran a finger along the empty armor. “Not the norm, I would expect.”

“No,” said Perry. “In the worlds that I’ve been to, there’s some effort to keep things stable. You’re growing out the population.”

“Well,” said Brigitta. “I’m not.” She looked up at him. “No children.”

“The only question I had was whether this was deliberately engineered or natural,” said Perry. “Whether you had a lot of people saying that they wanted to increase the population to accomplish the work of generations, or whether this was handed down from on high, a mandate that people needed to follow under penalty of … whatever.”

“Mmm,” said Brigitta. “The former, for my mother’s generation.”

“But not your own?” asked Perry.

Brigitta drummed her fingers on March’s head, then set off to look out onto the terrace and the world below. “We do things in spurts.”

“Spurts?” asked Perry.

“Yes,” nodded Brigitta. “We set up large productions, make as much as we can, then shut production down, or divert it.” She was still looking at the landscape. “It’s easier, often, to make enough of what you need to last for years, build at scale, then recycle, reuse, repurpose. So it was decided that we should focus on population, scale up our workforce.” She turned from her inspection of March to Perry. “You have these things, in your other worlds? Changes of power?”

“Yes,” said Perry. “Sometimes bloodless, sometimes with a genocide or two.”

“Genocide?” asked Brigitta. She raised an eyebrow. “Meaning … ?”

“Hundreds of thousands dead, maybe millions,” said Perry. “Slaughters, mass hangings, blood running down the streets.”

Brigitta shivered. “I hadn’t known whether those stories were true.”

“Stories from your own history?” asked Perry.

“Stories told to me by my mother,” said Brigitta. “I give them more credit now, if your worlds have had them too. Violence within the Natrix has been unknown to us.” She turned and looked at Perry. “You’ve fought people, killed them. Like that?”

“No,” said Perry. He thought about it for a moment. “No, not like that. But wars, yes. And you have wars here too, wars against something other than the insects.”

Brigitta nodded. “Other humans. Common ancestors. Differences in ideologies, in aims.” She let out a breath. “I will tell you of our history, but do you see the promise of the stars, the harshness of this world? The ways it remains unviable?”

“Yes,” said Perry. “I’d want to leave too, if possible.”

“There’s a war coming,” said Brigitta.

“It’s not here already?” asked Perry.

“The other humans live to the west,” said Brigitta. “We have two hundred cycles between the times we move the Natrix, to stay in the planet’s twilight, but they have chosen the ice and snow.”

“Alright,” said Perry. “But then … I mean, you shouldn’t really come in contact with each other, right?”

“They’re stationary, by design, dug into the ice,” said Brigitta. “Our march brings us closer to them. They don’t have the tools or resources to move, haven’t focused their efforts on that, and now they’re a year away from their palace of ice melting down. They need our power, our machines. There will be war.”

Perry frowned. “Let me lay it out, before you get into the history, just to see whether I can guess: the Natrix is largely powered by machines that are nearing three hundred years old, which no one on this planet can replicate or replace. You have, let’s say, three of them, which not only power your defenses, but your mech force as well. If you have people living an isolated life in the snows, they probably have one too. Do I have that right?”

Brigitta nodded slowly. “You are more right than you should be, given that you’ve only been here two days.”

“I’m a fast learner,” said Perry. “But I was hamstrung by not having someone to tell me directly.” He sighed and went to sit down on one of the room’s long sofas. “So I’m not entirely sold on your cause, because I don’t know what it is, and if you tell me that they’re the big bad snowmen, I’m going to be skeptical that this is a war of unprovoked aggression, not unless you have the receipts. But I want to listen, to learn, to get the history as you see it.”

Brigitta winced. “On second thought, I don’t think that I’m the one to tell you. I was never the driven one. I should get you to Liselle.”

“You’re the one I know,” said Perry. “And if you pass me off to a politician who’s going to give the story with a coating of sugar, I’m going to have to listen with full skepticism instead of just the normal amount.”

“Fine,” said Brigitta. She let out a breath. “Then we start with our fall from the stars.”