Incandescence

Other experiments in the Null Chamber had shown that the Null Line had, strictly speaking, vanished; although the weight throughout the chamber remained very small, there was no longer a line of perfect weightlessness running through the Splinter. The small weights that were present now were difficult to measure, but they seemed to undergo cyclic changes. Tan had suggested two possible explanations for this: either the Splinter's rate and axis of spin had been disturbed in such a way that the spin weight no longer canceled the rarb-sharq weight, or the rarb-sharq weight itself was no longer constant throughout each orbit, and hence could no longer be canceled by any constant spin.

In either case, the ceaseless groaning of the rock was probably due to the fact that the weights throughout the Splinter were no longer fixed; the precise forces were always shifting, repeatedly tightening and relaxing their grip on the rock. Tan believed that the price to be paid for this restlessness would be a gradual return to a state of alignment, whether that meant a change in the Splinter's spin, its orbit, or both.

Roi said, "This journey will be hard for you. Someone younger and healthier should go instead."

"Someone younger and healthier might climb out through the crack in the wall and never come back. It makes far more sense for me to risk the last few shifts of my own life than to allow someone else to throw away the best part of theirs."

"You can barely walk," Roi protested. "How are you going to reach the junub edge?"

"I've arranged for some couriers to bring me a cart."

"Are they going to deliver you to your destination as well?"

Zak said, "I want you to pull the cart. You and Ruz. Ruz has already made some instruments for me, to allow me to take measurements of whatever's there to see."

"So you want Ruz along to fix them if they break?"

"Yes."

Roi didn't ask what her own purpose would be, apart from sharing the load. She said, "You should have peace and ease at the end of your life, not a dangerous journey like this."

Zak rasped irritably. "If I knew that the Splinter was safe, I'd have peace. But I'm sure that it's not, so the best I can do is keep struggling to make that happen."

Roi made a sound of acquiescence. "What do you think it will tell us? Looking into the void?" The thing that had lit up the rock when it touched them seemed to have vanished, but then, from inside the Splinter the whole Incandescence seemed to vanish when they were no longer immersed in it.

Zak said, "We've been half right about a lot of things, but there's something missing from our theories, something whose nature we haven't even guessed yet. If we don't learn to understand it, it will kill us."

When Roi returned to the hatchlings' chamber to explain her plans, she found Gul in pain, full of ripe seed packets. She had helped him dispose of them many times before, but she was surprised that he hadn't found someone else while she was gone.

"I've been busy with the hatchlings," he said. "What was I supposed to do? Walk the tunnels begging for a mate, with the children lined up behind me copying every move?"

The hatchlings were asleep, so there was no danger of that now, but Roi had no contraceptive leaves. She was too tired to go hunting for the stupid weed, but she couldn't bear to see Gul in so much pain.

"Open your carapace," she said. "I'll take them."

"Are you sure?"

"Quickly, before it gets dark. If I can't see what I'm doing you'll be sorry."

As she snipped the seed packets free and loaded them into her egg cavities, the pleasure that spread through her body felt muted. Without the contraceptive to compete with them, the packets were producing far weaker secretions than she was accustomed to. She had never been entirely sure why it had always seemed right to keep her eggs from being fertilized; she had understood that the Splinter could only feed so many mouths, but other people made hatchlings all the time. Now, with the crops diminished, that should have been a stronger reason than ever, but even as the rush of contentment faded she felt no regret for what she'd done.

She had planned to stay for less than a shift before returning to the Calm to meet up with Zak and Ruz, but she found herself lingering, waiting for her eggs to be ready to lay. Six had been fertilized, and when their cases finally hardened she found a snug crevice close to the chamber where Gul worked, and she packed the eggs carefully into the gap in the rock.

She was aware of how strange it was that she was arranging for these hatchlings to be educated by their father, rather than leaving it to chance. The job itself was the thing, and every member of every work team, not to mention every hatchling, was supposed to be interchangeable. Still, in these dangerous times everyone's children needed to learn what Gul could teach them. She would have counselled any stranger to do the same.