What the Cable Held
Session: 2019-04-22
His own page for this day is blank. The account that survives was written by someone else, and it is livelier than his would have been. I have kept its events and left most of its jokes where they are.
There were four of them when the day began, in a ship that was mostly searched. By the time it began properly there were three. The party's reptilian member had borne the Akata sickness as long as he could. The account says he could not stand the feeling of small things moving beneath his scales, and that he went somewhere inside himself, nearly comatose, rocking where he sat. He could not go on with them.
— A xenodruid would call that a host response. It is still a hard thing to watch in someone you have fought beside.
They rested ten minutes and went to the rear of the ship, where the double doors were.
Bren Talic went through first, as the account says was his way, without checking the doors for traps or what was behind them. The last Akata aboard was at the far end of the corridor. It was surprised. Grek, the party's android mechanic, and his robot ED210 shot first. Taeon finished it.
It was his last spell of the day. The account calls it a stern glare and an almost casual mind thrust, and says the creature did not survive it. I would only add that casual is how a calm person looks from outside. It is not the same as careless.
Then they slept eight hours. When they woke, no more Akatas had come, and the crew were still missing.
The Acreon was tethered to the Drift Rock by towing cables, and they meant to cross on them.
In the airlock someone had left gear that would be useful, and the party noticed it. Somewhere in the talk that followed, one of them suggested that they tie themselves together. The account calls it an innocent idea. It turned out to be the one that kept them alive.
Note how the vine holds the vine.
Nothing climbs alone that climbs far.
— the Observances, from the Readings on the Canopy
Bren went first. There was a good deal of talk beforehand about his military service and the spacewalks he had made. He studied the cable, worked out the distance and the angle, tensed for the leap, and slipped on loose equipment. He tumbled out of the airlock into open space.
The rope did what ropes do. It took Taeon and Grek out after him. Neither was ready for it; the account declines to call their attempt to hold him valiant, and I will not argue. At the last moment Grek's reflexes found the airlock hatch and held it. He pulled all three of them back inside.
They tried again, and this time the crossing held.
The order tells the next part from the Fragments, and has done for a long time. I will give it to you as it is taught.
And the three went out along the line that bound the ship to the stone,
and they were tied one to another, for they had learned the worth of it that day.
And Kopalo came through the hatch, and in the hatch a thing came upon him.
And it was a memory, and he knew it for his own, and he did not know when it was.
And in it there was blood on him, and the blood is not explained.
And in it was the jungle of Castrovel, the jungle that is kept and guarded,
and he was running in it, and the Xenowardens came after him.
And the telling does not know why they followed, or whether they caught him.
And the memory ran on into the dark of the trees, and he came back to himself in the void,
and he was turned about, and the stone was behind him and the cable lost.
And he opened his eyes, and Qwitch was before him, drifting, who was thought gone with the shuttle.
And Qwitch had tried to take it, and it had not gone as he meant.
And she who kept the record asked why the stars were not written, since he was among them.
And the one who taught him said: Because he was not looking at them.
— Fragments of the Keepers, the Kopalo cycle, as it is usually told
The Fragments place more weight on the hatch than the records do. The account gives the memory a few lines between a joke about dice and a joke about Qwitch. It asks three questions and answers none of them. The Fragments keep the questions, and in this case I think that is right. Novitiates tend to go quiet at the third, the one about who was chasing him. I did too, the first time.
The rest of the crossing was uneventful, the account says, which is all it says. At the far end, on the face of the Drift Rock, they found a small cave opening some twenty feet "up" from where they had landed. Out there, up means whatever you decide it means. They climbed, or floated, to it and went inside, still looking for the Acreon's crew.
That is where the account leaves them: three of them and a robot inside a rock that does not let itself be scanned. Qwitch had been found again in the void, though the account does not say whether he went into the rock with them. Behind them the reptilian member was still rocking in the Acreon.
And somewhere in Taeon was a jungle he could not date, with blood on him and wardens behind him. The records do not say he spoke of it. I think he went into the cave anyway, because the crew were still missing and that was the work he had.