Anathem

by Neal Stephenson

  And what did “act accordingly” mean? It meant stay calm and don’t mess with the orbit that I was in. If I took no action, they’d be able to anticipate my position. If I did something, though, they’d have no way of predicting my whereabouts.

  I didn’t have much in the way of emergency supplies: just a blanket of metallized poly—like the emergency blanket they’d issued to Orolo after his Anathem—taped to the chest of my suit. It was to be used to block the light of the sun, where necessary, from striking our matte black suits with full force and overheating them, which would force the chiller to work harder and use more oxygen. I peeled mine loose and unfolded it—not easy with skelehands—and used it to cover as much of the nuke as I could, then snuggled beneath it.

  “Line of sight established.”

  Supposing they were looking, the telescopes on the Daban Urnud could now see me, albeit as just another hunk of crud thrown up in the two-hundred-missile launch. Chaff.

  Let’s put this in perspective: the Daban Urnud was something like fourteen thousand miles away. At their closest approach to Arbre, the whole planet looked as big to them as a pie held at arm’s length. At their farthest, the size of a saucer. For them to see my spread-out blanket, at this distance, was like trying to spot a gum wrapper from a hundred miles away. Worse—or, for me, better—it was like looking at a whole field covered with litter, trying to pick out a single gum wrapper from all the rest.

  On the other hand, Lio—who had brought Praxic Age Exoatmospheric Weapons Systems with him to the Convox—had cautioned us not to get cocky, and Jules had added weight to this by telling us how the Urnudans, past masters of space warfare, had coupled syndevs to excellent telescopes, enabling them to sift through vast numbers of images to find things that didn’t look right. Decoys, for example, were easy to detect because they were usually nothing more than balloons, whose huge size and light weight made them feel the drag of the evanescent atmosphere much more than real payloads.

  So decoy orbits behaved a little differently from non-decoy ones. Moreover, once the Urnudans had created a census of all the stuff that the two-hundred-missile-launch had flung into orbit, they would be in a position to notice if anything went missing, or changed to a new orbit. This could only happen if it had thrusters and guidance on board.

  So in that sense we had already screwed up the mission. We had to fall back on safety in numbers: the hope that my blanket’s sudden disappearance from the junk-cloud would not be noticed soon enough for the Pedestal to do anything about it.

  But I was getting ahead of myself. In order for this blanket to suddenly disappear, I was going to have to rendezvous with the others.

  That would be easier with oxygen. I closed my eyes, tried to relax, tried to stop thinking about the Pedestal and their admirable telescopes and their syndevs. Here was that rare circumstance where worrying too much actually could kill me.

  Once my pulse had dropped to a more reasonable range, I found the keyboards in my arm-stumps and typed messages to Cord and to Ala, in case I died and the suit was recovered later with its memory intact.

  The suit’s syndev included an orbital theorics calculator, which one almost never had time to use in the heat of the moment, but I fired it up and used it to verify some of my hunches as to what I’d need to do when I drew within range of the others. It was infuriatingly difficult to concentrate, though. My brain had become like an old sponge that has sopped up more water than it can hold.

  In zero gravity, there was almost no contact between the suit and the person wearing it. Air, at just the right temperature, circulated all around my naked body—it was like taking a bath in air. Behind my back was a small chemical plant going full tilt, but I was only aware of it as a source of gentle white noise. Other than that, I heard nothing except the beating of my own heart. Normally, I could get a jolt of excitement simply by opening my eyes and looking out the face-mask: I’m in space! But now all I could see was the back side of a crinkly blanket, as if I were poultry in a roasting pan. So it was not difficult to feel drowsy. My body and my mind had never had so many reasons to want rest; between jet lag and training, we’d slept very little at Elkhazg, and not at all in the last twenty-four hours. The last half hour had been absurdly stressful—just the kind of experience after which any sane person would want to crawl under the covers of a warm bed and cry himself to sleep.

  The only thing that kept me from passing out instantly was fear of my own sleepiness. After the training we’d been through, I now knew the symptoms of carbon dioxide poisoning better than the alphabet. Nausea, check. Dizziness, check. Vomiting, check. Headache, check. But who wouldn’t have all of those symptoms after being kicked up a hundred-mile-high staircase by a monyafeek? What came next? Oh, yeah—almost forgot—drowsiness and confusion.

  I checked the readouts in my screen. Checked them again. Closed my eyes, waited for my vision to clear, checked them a third time. They were fine. Oxygen tank level was yellow—which was to be expected, after all the heavy breathing—but the oxygen content of the air I was breathing was fine and the CO2 level was zero—the scrubber was taking all of it out.

  But if I were drowsy and confused, might I be reading the numbers wrong?

  I drifted off, but started awake every few minutes. Enough time had passed that I’d begun to second-guess what had happened just after the launch. I’d been so focused on what I’d been doing that when I’d noticed Jad bumping into the blue payload and getting stuck to it, I’d decided not to go check it out. That had been a mistake. I should have gone for it. Instead, Arsibalt had gone after Jad—and to judge from the way Jesry had been screaming when Arsibalt had made it back, he had just barely escaped with his life, and Jad’s.

  This was a bad plan. Who had come up with the idea of doing it this way?

  I understood the logic. Arbre had two hundred missiles. No more. Each just barely capable of getting a tiny payload to a dangerously low and short-lived orbit. There was only so much we could do, working from that. We’d all studied the plan at Elkhazg, come to grips with it, nodded our heads, accepted it.

  But that was one thing. To be up here with payloads zooming around chaotically, bumping into each other, getting melted together—hiding under space blankets—there were so many ways this could have gone wrong.

  Could still go wrong. Could be going wrong now.

  What if I’d been a little hastier when I had reached the nuke, and made a bid to drag it back? We’d all have died.

  I was worrying again. Actually, it was worse than that—even more pointless. Rather than worrying about the future—which could be changed—I was worrying about things that might have gone wrong in the past, and couldn’t be changed in any case.

  Leave that to the Incanters and the Rhetors, respectively.

  Where were all of the Thousanders now? Gathered in a stadium, chanting?

  “Raz!”

  I opened my eyes. Had one of those moments when I simply couldn’t figure out where I was—could not convince myself that the launch hadn’t been a dream.

  “Raz!”

  One ikon was visible on the display: Fraa Jesry.

  “Here,” I said.

  “It’s great to hear your voice!” he exclaimed, sounding enormously relieved.

  “Well, I’m touched to hear you say so, Jesry—”

  “Shut up. I’m incoming. Get the blanket out of the way so you can get a clue what’s going on.”

  “Are you sure? Aren’t we in line of sight?”

  “No.”

  “I think that we are in line of sight, Jesry.”

  “We were, last time. Now we’re not.”

  “Last time?”

  “We missed you the first time around. Crossed your path, but the altitude difference was too great. Couldn’t raise you on the wireless.”

  “This is our second try?” I checked the time. He was right. Ninety minutes—not forty-five—had passed. My oxygen indicator had gone red. I’d slept through the first rendezvo
us!

  I swiped the blanket out of the way. Saw a balloon, a mile away and rapidly getting closer. Tucked up under it was an ungainly structure of inflated grapnel-tubes with dozens of red and blue fuzzballs caught up in it. A few space-suited figures on monyafeeks kept station nearby, all turned to look my direction. The row of ikons flashed up as I rejoined the reticule. But no one spoke except Jesry. He had come out alone.

  “If I fail, remain calm and wait,” he said. “There are two layers of backup plans.”

  “But they sent the best first, eh?” I kicked away from the nuke, very gently, and fired a grapnel into its net-cloud.

  “Thanks, but for doing what you did, you get bragging rights, Raz.” Jesry had floated in range. He spun about, collected himself, and fired a grapnel of his own.

  “Maybe we can brag when we’re old,” I said. “What should I do?”

  “Orient positive radial,” he said. This meant that instead of facing in the direction of our orbital movement as before, we had to swing around ninety degrees so that our backs were to Arbre. I did it, and bumped lightly against Jesry as we came around side by side.

  “Rotate down forty-five degrees and fire a fifteen-second burst,” Jesry said.

  Fifteen seconds was huge, and, if the calculations had been wrong, would send us far off course with no propellant to get back. But I did it. Didn’t even think of not taking the suggestion. This was Jesry. He’d been watching me, coolly, as I’d gone out to fetch the nuke. Had done the theorics in his head, and triple-checked it with the syndev. I swiveled and fired. Lost my visual in so doing.

  “You are headed for us as if we were reeling you in on a line,” Sammann proclaimed. But his tone of voice was all I really needed to hear.

  “Take no action,” Lio warned us. “You’re passing under us—we are coming to grapple you—” And a moment later, two sudden yanks, and a cheer from the others, told me we’d been captured. I took my fingers off the thruster controls just to prevent my trembling hands’ inadvertently firing the thrusters, and let Lio and Osa tow us in.

  “Raz, you’re secure,” Lio said. “Sammann, final star check please?”

  “We are still shielded by the balloon,” Sammann said.

  “Good,” Lio said. “I’m sure everyone wishes to congratulate Fraa Erasmas, but don’t. Save oxygen. Do it later. Arsibalt, you know what’s next—let us know if you need to borrow oxygen from someone else.”

  The others had pulled on white overgarments of tough fabric to stop micrometeoroids and to reflect the heat of the sun. These made them look more like proper spacemen. One was given to me, and I put it on. Then, like the others, I snap-linked myself to this huge tangle of nets and payloads and grapnels and tried to sleep while Arsibalt and Lio got the tender online. This meant maneuvering it and the nuke close together and then connecting them. Already connected to the tender was a flexible water bladder. Other cell members had been busy during my absence scavenging water from the reservoirs on the blue payloads and transferring it into this bag, which had plumped out until it was bathtub-sized.

  Arsibalt snap-linked himself to the control panel of the nuke and spent a lot of time motionless, which probably meant he was reading the instructions on the virtual screen inside his face-mask and going through checklists. After a while he got to work deploying some long poles that ended up sticking out from one side of the nuke like spines. Petals blossomed from near their ends, blocking our view of whatever was on the tips of those poles. Arsibalt returned to the control panel and worked for a few moments, then informed us, “I have powered up the reactor. Avoid the ends of the poles. They are hot.”

  “Hot, as in radioactive?” Jesry asked.

  “No. Hot as in ouch. They are where the system radiates its waste heat into space.” Then, after a pause: “But they’re also radioactive.”

  No one said anything, but I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who checked his oxygen supply. The water was now being split into hydrogen and oxygen. In a few hours we’d be able to replace our depleted air and fuel supplies, and swap used for fresh scrubbers, at the tender. Until then, we had to take it easy, and share what we had with others who needed it more. Esma, for example, had been responsible for scavenging water from payloads, and had used up a lot of her oxygen.

  Lio said, “Everyone except Sammann and Gratho drink, eat, and sleep. If you absolutely can’t sleep, review coming tasks. Sammann and Gratho, connect us.”

  Sammann and Gratho clambered free of their monyafeeks and took to shinnying around the payload-tangle. They found some kind of magic box, broke it free from the mess, and got it lashed into a position where it enjoyed a clear line of sight down to Arbre. A few minutes later Sammann announced that we were on the Reticulum. But I already suspected that based on new lights and jeejah-displays that had begun to flourish in my peripheral vision.

  “Hello, Fraa Erasmas, this is Cell 87,” said a voice in my ears. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, Tulia, I can hear you fine. Good morning, or whatever it is where you are.”

  “Evening,” she said. “We’re in the equipment shed of a farm about a thousand miles southwest of Tredegarh. What took you guys so long?”

  “We were enjoying the view and having a party,” I said. “How have you been spending the time? What is it that Cell 87 does in that equipment shed?”

  “Whatever makes things easier for you.”

  “Tulia, I’ve hardly ever known you to be so helpful, so compliant…”

  “Looks like you need to urinate. What’s the holdup?”

  “I’ll get right on it.”

  “Any particular reason your pulse is so rapid?”

  “Gosh, I don’t know, let me think…”

  “Spare me,” she said. “Here’s a picture of the mess you’re in—check it out while you’re peeing.” And just like that, my screen was filled with a three-dimensional rendering of a big silver sphere with a mess of struts, fuzzballs, and color-coded payloads tucked up against one side of it. “Here’s where you are.” My name flashed in yellow. “Here’s where you need to be.” A payload began flashing on the other side of the mess. “We worked out the most efficient route.” A line snaked through, linking my name to the destination.

  “That doesn’t look so efficient,” I began.

  She cut me off. “There’s stuff you don’t know. Each of the others in your cell has to follow a different route to a different payload. This one is optimized to minimize interference.”

  “I stand corrected.”

  A flashing red box appeared about halfway along my route. “What’s the red thing?” I asked.

  She conferred with someone in the equipment shed, then answered, “One of the payloads has a sharp corner you’ll want to avoid. No worries, we’ll talk you through it.”

  “Gosh, thanks.”

  Rustling papers, she announced, “I’m going to talk you through the process of unstrapping yourself from the S2-35B.”

  “Up here, we call it a monyafeek.”

  “Whatever. Move your right hand up to the buckle above your left collarbone…”

  I’ll describe what we did next as if we’d just done it. In the act, though, it was—as the old joke goes—a whole hour’s work packed into just one twenty-four-hour day.

  It would have been twenty-four days, though, if not for our support cells on the ground, keeping track of what we were doing and coming up with ways to make it easier. During rest breaks—ruthlessly enforced by our private physicians—I learned that Arsibalt’s support cell was in a drained swimming pool in a Kelx parochial suvin, and Lio’s was on an unmarked drummon parked at a maintenance depot. And as slowly became plain, each of these cells was in turn being supported by networks of other cells out there in the Antiswarm.

  Work began with disentangling and sorting the goods we’d hauled in during that first, feverish twenty minutes. Suur Vay tended to Jules Verne Durand and to Fraa Jad. Both ended up being fine. The Laterran was weak from lack of nutrition, and ha
d suffered more from the ride up to orbit. It simply took him longer to become himself again. It wasn’t really clear what had happened to Fraa Jad. He was unresponsive for a while, though his vital signs were in acceptable ranges and his eyes were open. Eventually, he requested that Suur Vay leave off pestering him. Then he dropped off the reticule and did nothing for an hour. Finally he began to move, and to take part in the unpacking. I wondered who was in his support cell.

  The fuzz-balls we stripped off, wadded up, and got out of the way. The payloads we strapped together with poly ties, just so they wouldn’t drift out from the shelter of the balloon and give away our position. We rigged the payload-cluster to a monyafeek, and used its thrusters for station-keeping. The balloon’s low mass and high drag made it inevitable that we’d drift out from under its shelter unless we tapped the thrusters every so often to slow ourselves down. If we did this for more than a couple of days, we’d re-enter the atmosphere along with the balloon, and there would be a sort of race to see whether incineration or crushing deceleration would kill us first. But we had no intention of hanging around that long.

  Arsibalt, Osa, and I assembled the decoy while the rest of Cell 317 assembled the Cold Black Mirror.

  The decoy was erected on a base consisting of seven monyafeeks lashed together in a hexagonal array. We scavenged propellants from the blue payloads just as Suur Esma had earlier done with water, and loaded it into the decoy’s tanks.

  That took care of propulsion. On top of this platform we attached what looked like a big unruly wad of fabric—it was an inflatable structure—that had come up as a separate payload. There was a zipper in its side. We opened it, and stuffed in everything we didn’t need: nets, leftover packing material, parts of other monyafeeks. Also there were four manikins dressed in coveralls. We closed the zipper to prevent all of that junk from drifting out, and opened it from time to time as members of the other team came to us with stuff they wanted to get rid of. But we didn’t inflate it yet, because space on this side of the balloon was tight, and getting tighter as the Cold Black Mirror took shape.