Adiamante Read Free Page B

swords, except no one had ever squandered that much energy to forge an adiamante sword. Once formed, you couldn’t mill it, work it, or change it, and only a gigawatt laser, a sun-fired particle beam, or a nucleonic knife could cut it.
    And yes, it had taken a full asteroid complex to create it. I supposed the complex was still out there, beyond the night, fusactors cold, waiting for the resurgence of the Rebuilt Hegemony that could never come, or some future rebuilding of Old Earth necessitated by the workings of the Construct—and my failure. I shivered at that thought.
    Under the tree lay a fragment, a faraway meteoric fragment that had dropped from the sundered skies of The Flight. I let it lie, wishing the cybs had been wise enough to let the hard fragments of their past lie. But, being cybs, that was exactly what they could not do, not when for them net-reality was equal to whole-body reality.

    After a few moments of deep breaths, I began to run again, back through the trees, away from the adiamante. I circled slowly north and uphill, back toward the past.
    As I stopped outside the house, close enough to hold the comment, I pulsed a link to Crucelle, who answered as though he had been waiting.
    â€œAny further thoughts?” he asked, red-bronze mandagger waiting for use.
    â€œThe ell stations … they need to be powered up. Isn’t that Elanstan?”
    â€œI’ll tell her,” Crucelle volunteered, and I let him, shaking my head at the thought.
    â€œMe, too,” he answered my unspoken concern. “There’s no guarantee that we could put Earth back together again. We almost didn’t last time, and the Jykserians weren’t nearly so strong.”
    â€œLetting them destroy the locials? Would that be enough?” Arielle’s storm-currents pulsed darkangel-like.
    â€œThat wouldn’t give them enough revenge, I suspect,” I pulsed, sensing Crucelle’s nod even before I finished. “People who feel they’re right, and who’ve been humiliated …”
    â€œThey’ll want to reduce us to a bloody pulp?”
    It was my turn to nod.
    â€œSo what do we do now?” he asked.
    â€œWe’ll need to concede whatever it takes to get their marcybs …” I stopped. “No … that will just encourage them to act immediately. Give them full access to the locials. Treat them as honored guests, but not too honored, as if they were not quite equals.”
    â€œThat’s true enough.”
    â€œThat’s also the problem. They’re sitting in orbit with enough power to make a large mess, and they’re looking for an excuse to do it without any understanding of the repercussions.”
    â€œI think they understand,” interjected Arielle. “They
just don’t care. If we use force to stop them, then we fuel another millennium of cyb-based technological development. At the end of that development, they’ll have developed devices that will nova an entire system, or worse. If we surrender, they’ll find an excuse to commit some range of atrocities or try to sterilize the whole planet. The Construct forbids either, in any case.”
    â€œLike the way the Construct forbade what our forbearers did to Al-Moratoros?”
    They both winced. That memory had not faded, though it was not ours, nor our doing. And that wince said all there was to say about why we wouldn’t break the Construct, no matter what the cost.
    â€œEither way,” Arielle concluded, “that’s our payback for using power in forcing The Flight.”
    â€œThanks, Arielle,” I flipped back.
    â€œYou are most welcome, puissant mage Ecktor. And Coordinator,” she added ironically.
    I continued to concentrate, but nothing new or original came to mind. I finally concluded, “We’re still left with the fact that Old Earth is the planet of death where only demis and draffs can live. Proving that could be hard, if