Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

said, ’But Port Sol isn’t in the Kuiper Belt any more.’
    ’No indeed. Now it swoops around a long elliptical path that
reaches from Saturn all the way in to Earth’s orbit. It has been
brought in from the dark, along with a whole flock of other
outer-system objects. All for a purpose.’
    ’Why are you so fat?’ Mela asked bluntly.
    The Curator patted his belly, apparently not offended. ’Do say
what’s on your mind, child! In the cold, the rounder your shape is
the better off you are. Ask a Silver Ghost! And out where Port Sol
came from, believe me, it’s cold, even now. You’re Mela, aren’t you?
There has been a lot of gossip in the Conclave about you.
Metaphorically speaking, of course. You’re doing a good job. A lot of
us are jealous.’ He reached out and ruffled Mela’s short-cut hair.
She flinched back, glaring.
    Symat said heavily, ’Can’t you tell she doesn’t like that?’
    ’Actually, no. I’m a little light on sentience programming. In the
empathy area, in fact. Though I hope that what I lack in personality
I make up for in charm. Of course I could be wrong about that. But
how would I ever know?’ He laughed lightly.
    Mela stared at him. ’How can you be like that? Don’t you want
more, to be whole?’
    ’Not really. Believe me, when you see the job I have to do, you’ll
understand why.’ Even now he kept smiling. ’Welcome to Port Sol!’
     
    Under the Curator’s effortless control, the flitter dipped and
swooped over Port Sol’s eroded landmarks.
    Every child in the system knew about Port Sol. It was itself
ancient, a fragment of unprocessed rubble left over from the
formation of Sol system. And its human history stretched far back
too, almost as far back as man’s first tentative steps off the home
planet.
    ’Once they built starships here,’ the Curator said. ’Before
hyperdrive, even. They used the worldlet’s own water ice for reaction
mass, digging out great pits like that one.’ The quarry he pointed
out was a slumped hole in the ground, indistinguishable from a
thousand others. ’When hyperdrive came this place was bypassed for a
while. But then, because it was so hidden away and forgotten, the
first of the Ascendents came here.’
    ’Ascendents?’ Symat asked.
    ’Undying,’ Mela said immediately.
    The Curator raised a thin eyebrow. ’They’ve been called many names
in their long history - jasofts, pharaohs - few of them
complimentary. Ascendents isn’t so bad, I think: we are all their
descendants after all… Whatever they’re called, I care for them.
That’s my vocation! You’ll see, anyhow. You’ll meet them. They want
to meet you, Symat.’
    Symat tried to absorb that, and tried not to react to Mela’s
obvious fear.
    The flitter circled this little world rapidly, and soon they once
more approached the mast, with the flare of blue light at its tip.
Buildings clustered at the base of the tower, while machines like
giant beetles dug a pit in the ice that sliced through the pale marks
of older workings.
    Symat said, ’This is a rocket, isn’t it? And it’s pushing this
moon.’
    The Curator nodded. ’Very perceptive. We’re actually at one spin
pole of the moon - a good place to push.’ He pointed. ’The engines
are GUTdrives - one of mankind’s oldest technologies, immensely
reliable. The exhaust is plasma, charged matter, the outflow shaped
by magnetic fields. And, just like in those ancient starship engines,
the stuff of Port Sol itself is being consumed as reaction mass. You
can see how the engineering here has churned up the old surface.
Aside from Earth itself, Port Sol is probably the system’s key
historic site. But Ascendents care little for archaeology.’ He
sighed. ’I suppose you wouldn’t if you could remember it all!’
    Mela said, ’So this is an Ascendent project.’
    ’Well, of course. The mass of Port Sol is huge, and by comparison
the rocket delivers only a small push. You have to keep shoving for a
very long time before you can kick it out of its orbit. But that’s
just the sort of long-term, dogged programme the Ascendents excel
at.’
    The rocket tower dropped behind the horizon, and the flitter swept
down towards a plain of ice, heavily melted by the heat of multiple
landings. Nearby was a cluster of domes, evidently their
destination.
    As the ground fled beneath the descending flitter, Symat spotted a
slim black pillar, obviously artificial, standing in the middle of
what looked oddly like a forest,