Page 35 of The Sunlit Man

Nomad, she’s hurting,Auxiliary reminded him.Please.

He hesitated, seeing Rebeke holding to the towline she’d fetched, looking anywhere but at the corpse. Eyes downcast. He’d noticed, of course. It would be a bright day in the Weeping before Auxiliary read a human’s emotions better than he did. Empathy, though…well, he should feel ashamed that a creature that was both deadandinhuman did a better job of that.

“I know,” he said to Rebeke, letting his other response go. “Keep that in mind. It might help.”

She nodded. He gave her a moment, walking over to his hovercycle to radio back to Contemplation. Perhaps he was supposed to call all three of the Greater Good at once, but their rules were irrelevant to him, and he liked Contemplation. She saw through him.

“Hey,” he said. “We got the scout, but it seems likely he radioed home first. You might have company on the way. How’s the hunt going?”

“Terribly,” Contemplation said. “There doesn’t seem to be anything here, though we’re in the right place.”

“How can you tell?” he asked, curious.

“Celestial navigation,” she said. “We can tell from the rings and the stars. Those are the glowing things—”

“I know what stars are, thank you,” he said.

“Just checking. Well, they can tell us with reasonable accuracywhere we are on the planet. The corridor we’re in is easy to determine. Harder to tell the longitude, however. You need—”

“Precise clocks,” he said. “Yes. I’m aware of that too.”

“Strange, how much you know about the surface world for one who lived his life underneath it.”

“Keep asking yourself questions like that, Contemplation,” he said, “and maybe you’ll eventually realize the erroneous assumptions you’ve made about me. Either way, we don’t have a lot of time left.”

“We’re repeating our search,” she said. “The opening might be buried deeply this time, which would make our readings difficult. Still, weshouldhave found it. This is the longitude where the Cinder King stopped each time to test his key. Several of our people have seen the opening, Nomad. It’s real. Yet our prospectors can’t find it.”

“Well, what do you want us to do?”

“You’re taking orders from me now?” Contemplation asked.

“Depends on how stupid they are.”

She grunted. “If it pleases you, accept this direction—stay there a little while and see if you can spot anyone coming to check on the scout. Perchance they’ll just send a small group in to investigate.”

“If this is the region where the door is,” Nomad said, “then the Cinder King might have guessed what we’re doing. He might realize you’ve swapped the keys.”

“If we’ve been subjected to such ill luck, expect an entire military force. You will, at your pleasure, please warn us if that’s the case.”

A good enough suggestion. “We’ll do it.”

“I am pleased you find my direction agreeable. Did the scout have a sunheart in his vehicle?”

Nomad glanced toward Rebeke, who was already checking on that herself. At his called question, she looked back at him and shook her head.

“Looks like it was running on a battery,” he said to Contemplation.

“Shades,” she muttered. “We could have used that.”

“Your ships are running out of power?”

“We decided not to make new sunhearts,” she explained, “though we are low on power. The decision was made instead to try Elegy’s plan of getting into the Refuge. Our failures so far have left us strained for resources. They come at a terrible cost, requiring—”

“I know.”

“I was to go next,” she said, “as were my sisters in the Greater Good. Three others were to take our place. I feel…a burden of guilt, not having gone as was my time. Yet our people need leadership right now. Unfortunately, if we don’t find the entrance…we now won’t have enough power to last another rotation.”

Damnation. “Then you’dbetterfind that entrance,” he said, nodding to Rebeke as she put away the towline and climbed onto her cycle.

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