The Life Engineered by J. F. Dubeau Page B

minded. Yet I suddenly found myself fascinated by the technology I was witnessing. This scientific miracle wasn’t just an incredible tool available to Skinfaxi; it was a part of him as much as legs were a part of me. What was a violation of the traditional laws of physics was a simple means of locomotion to him.
    “Where are we going?”
    “While I was on my way to retrieve you from your little high-altitude trip, I calculated the origin of the meteor that destroyed Yggdrassil. A cursory spectrographic survey told me that Ragnarok had originally been a single chunk of rock that had broken apart during travel. A little reverse navigation and I found that it had come from . . .”
    The stars suddenly stopped moving with another odd rippling. Skinfaxi came to a complete stop, and on-screen I could see a perfect circle of absolute darkness. Or rather, a circular area through which I could see no stars.
    “. . . here.”
    “What is that?” My initial thought was that it must be a black hole, but further reflection made me realize that light wasn’t being distorted around the phenomenon, nor was there any change in gravity. The object, if it could be called such, was roughly three kilometers across but had, to my limited perception, no mass at all.
    “A collapsor point. The front door of a wormhole.”
    “So Ragnarok came though this and coincidentally ran into Midgard?”
    “Hmph! Not coincidentally, but yes. I think the meteor was sent from somewhere with the specific goal of destroying Yggdrassil.”
    “That’s insane! Why would anyone attack Yggdrassil? Wouldn’t she have told me if she had enemies? Especially if it meant I’d be dodging meteors within minutes.”
    “Who knows? It doesn’t matter anyway. I don’t know of anyone who would wish harm on one of the Gaias, and there’s no reason to think Yggdrassil believed any different. She might have assumed it was just catastrophic bad luck. But in my humble opinion that meteor couldn’t have made it to Midgard without someone carefully orchestrating its trajectory, especially with the proximity of Asgard. The gas giant should have pulled that rock before it even got close to Midgard.”
    “Could it have been aliens?” I asked. While Skinfaxi had explained his reasoning, I had looked up if our civilization had contact with nonhuman life-forms, but nothing had come up.
    “It’s not completely impossible, but too implausible. There are billions of stars in the galaxy, but we’ve done a good job cataloguing the vast majority. Especially the really interesting ones. Fermi’s paradox holds true: if there were a civilization out there capable of lobbing asteroids through wormholes, we’d have seen signs by now.
    “One of us used this wormhole to toss a stone at Yggdrassil.”
    There was an interesting spark of fire in Skinfaxi’s tone. So far I’d seen him dodging away from a collapsing moon with a detached sense of humor. While I couldn’t claim to know this Capek very well, I was surprised by the edge in his voice.
    “So how do we find out who did this?”
    “We?” he asked.
    “I literally have nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, so I might as well help you figure this out.” While he had mentioned something about taking me to “the City,” whatever that meant, I was far more curious about who could and would arrange for the destruction of an astral body for the sake of assassinating my progenitor. There was a mystery that needed investigation, and I was drawn to solve it. I hadn’t been able to do anything to protect Yggdrassil, who had given me life; the least I could do was figure out who was behind this.
    “Ha-ha!” he answered, his good cheer back in force. “There’s only one way to answer your question, my friend. Keep your eyes open. You’re not going to want to miss this!”
    With these words my companion activated whatever propulsion mechanism displaced him at sub–light speeds and moved us toward the collapsor point. As