The Ring of Charon the-1

by Roger MacBride Allen

  As if any human being could stay on top of what was going on in a place like the Multisystem.

  Part Five

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Thought Chain

  Tyrone Vespasian caressed the Nenya’s controls. It had been too long since Vespasian had done anything but watch others go into space. He was more than pleased that he had convinced Daltry his piloting skills were sharp, and that the Gravities Research Station would have use for his knowledge of the Earthpoint wormhole’s behavior.

  His face darkened. There was another, truer reason for his flying off to Pluto. With Lucian gone, he had to get off the Moon, run away from his pointless guilt, his sense of loss.

  He couldn’t have done anything to prevent Lucian’s dying. But there should have been something. And by piloting this craft, by tending to the still-weakened Larry Chao, perhaps he was performing penance.

  Larry. He was back there, in his cabin. There was a boy who had seen more than his share.

  And done more. One 25-year-old kid pushes one button, and the history of humanity is changed for all time.

  He checked his gauges carefully, and made sure the Nenya was holding together. If these gravity geniuses didn’t get back to Pluto, history might end altogether.

  * * *

  “So what’s happened while I’ve been out?” Larry asked, his voice weak and thin.

  “Quite a bit,” Simon Raphael said, trying to hide his worry. The lad had been under sedation almost constantly for three days—but coming out of it this time, he seemed far more calm and rational than he had before. But even if he was recovered enough to sit up for a time, he was clearly not yet well. Though there was nothing physically wrong with Larry, his mind had suffered a cruel enough shock to weaken his body as well. His subconscious was responding, trying to recover from injuries he had never actually suffered.

  Raphael spoke, pretending for Larry’s sake that he did not notice anything wrong. “We’re not really getting anything new. Just updates. One word we’re getting from everywhere: the structures are going up. Eyewitness and video reports from Mars, the radar teams at Venus, Sun-side overflight missions on Mercury. Observations of all Jupiter and Saturn’s major satellites. They’re all reporting the same thing—huge structures are rising on the equators of all the worlds.

  “And more and more of both types—the gee-point asteroids and the faster gee points coming through the wormhole—are just placing themselves in parking orbits and waiting once they arrive at their target planet. What they’re waiting for, I don’t know. There also seems to be some sort of disturbances in the equatorial weather bands of Jupiter and Saturn, and there have been several sightings of asteroids entering Jupiter’s atmosphere. God only knows how the Charonians are managing that, or what it means. Except that they can survive inside a gas giant. No one can figure out how the Charonians are staying alive on Mercury and Venus and Ganymede, either. The biologists say it’s patently impossible—except the Charonians are doing it.

  “The first gee-point asteroids have only just arrived at Uranus, and Neptune can expect visitors in a few days. Pluto’s turn is coming if the trajectory projections hold up. The Moon still hasn’t been touched, presumably because the Wheel lives there.

  “The big structures are different shapes on each world, though I doubt that means anything. It matches the patterns at smaller scales. Every Lander has variants on the auxiliary creatures and machines that attend it, but they all do the same work. On Mars, the Charonian structures are pyramids. On others, massive cylinders, or enormous hemispherical domes.”

  “Things are moving toward a climax,” Larry said. “The last of the Martian pyramids will be complete in a day or so. What happens then? What happens when enough of the big structures are complete on the other worlds?”

  Raphael smiled. “Maybe all the orbiting gee-point objects crash, and use the big structures for target practice.”

  “Charming thought,” Larry said. A few of the Landers had malfunctioned, crashing instead of landing gently. There was one confirmed crash on Venus, two at Ganymede and one impact on Mars, on the other side of the globe from Port Viking, just a few hours after the Anthony went through the wormhole. Thankfully, the Martian impacter was a small gee point, moving fairly slowly when it hit. It had punched a hell of a big hole in the surface, but had not caused any casualties or damage to inhabited areas. “The crashed Landers are the closest thing to good news we’ve had since the first commlink with Earth,” Larry said. “They at least show the enemy is fallible. But times are bad when an asteroid crashing into a world is good news.

  “The thing is, I get the feeling that the asteroid strikes should be telling me something,” Larry went on. “Something important. But the gee points’ parking themselves in orbit worries me most of all. That’s a signal that the Charonians are ready for the next phase—whatever that next phase is.”

  Damn it, who or what were the Charonians? Who controlled that Sphere? And from where? “Sorry,” Larry said. “My mind’s wandering. There are too damn many questions.” Larry thought of the recording of the shattered sphere Marcia MacDougal had picked up from the first tap on the Lunar Wheel. At least that was clear now—and yet still a mystery. “Can you call up the sphere image Marcia showed us?”

  Raphael worked the controls on his notepack. The wallscreen cleared and showed a sullen red globe glowing in the darkness. And there was the burn-through, the twin sparks of fire leaping away from inside it and racing away.

  Raphael set the holographic image to repeat, and brought up a series of images of the Dyson Sphere as relayed from Earth via the Saint Anthony.

  “They’re the same,” Raphael said. “They have to be the same. They both display the same surface markings. As if someone had etched in lines of longitude and latitude. The patterns are identical.”

  “But the images of the Sphere relayed by the Anthony show nothing that suggests any such thing ever happened to it,” Larry objected, staring at the two images.

  “Perhaps the burn-through is on the other side of the Sphere, on the hemisphere not visible from Earth.” Raphael suggested.

  “No, this Sphere, Earth’s Sphere, isn’t wobbling or tumbling. It’s very clearly under control,” Larry said.

  Raphael nodded. “You’re right. But then what does the message-image of the shattered Sphere mean? Is it a premonition? A warning? What sort of enemy would be powerful enough to endanger a Dyson Sphere? An entity that can grab stars and planets, that can call upon the entire power output of a star. What could be powerful enough to dare attack that?”

  Larry shrugged helplessly. “Why were there two stars inside the Dyson Sphere?” He shook his head. “A side issue. The physicists can worry about it later.”

  “They’re all side issues,” Raphael said, a bit heatedly. “Compared to figuring out the Charonians’ next move, everything else is a side issue. Let’s try to tackle the situation from another tack. Maybe there’s some clue in when things happen, their order.” He pulled out his notepack and called a chronology of events up onto the screen.

  “Okay, but if the Charonians ignore human activity, so should we,” Larry said. He took the notepack from Raphael and worked the controls for a moment. “Besides, we have no idea what they would chart as a major or minor event. Let’s blank out the human events and just chart all the Charonian actions, no matter how trivial, against time.” Larry set the system for graphic display on the wallscreen, a red dot against a white background for every single thing that happened.

  Raphael looked up at the display and drew in his breath. From the moment Earth vanished until the time the Lunar Wheel received the first image of the shattered Sphere, the pace of events was leisurely at best. It was immediately after that image that things were thrown into a panicky rush and started to happen in frantic haste, all over the Solar System. The image of the shattered Sphere had stimulated the Wheel to action.

  “To me, that pattern says the shattered Sphere image scared the
merry hell out of the Wheel,” Larry said. “So why should a picture of a Sphere scare it? What do we know about the Sphere, anyway?” He lay back in the bed.

  Raphael took back the notepack, looked over the summaries. “Let me see. According to what we have from Earth, there are at least eight G-class stars around the Dyson Sphere, held in place by gravity control. Uncounted terrestrial-sized worlds around each star, perhaps ten or twenty around each.”

  “So what are those worlds to the Charonians?” Larry asked, staring at the ceiling. “Prisoners? Science experiments?”

  A weird and chilling idea popped into Raphael’s mind. “Or perhaps toys? Or pets? They’re certainly being well cared for, if Earth is any example. None of us dared dream that Earth would have survived in such good shape.”

  Suddenly, Larry sat up again. “That’s it. What they’re doing is keeping Earth safe. That’s the point. You’ve just reminded me of a dumb idea I tossed out a long time ago. Maybe they got the Earth out of the way before the rough stuff began here in the Solar System. Earth was being taken out of harm’s way. Maybe the rough stuff is about to begin, here.”

  Raphael looked at Larry and felt fear sweat suddenly popping out of his forehead. “Suppose it’s not the Earth they want—but the Solar System?” Raphael asked.

  The Nenya roared through the darkness, accelerating toward Pluto, many dark days ahead.

  * * *

  Gerald MacDougal bustled into the crowded wardroom of the Terra Nova and looked around. A dozen conversations were starting up between people who had never met before. Like lunchtime on the first day of school, he thought. A roomful of new people, a sense of things beginning, a chance for new adventure.

  As he made his way through the line for his morning tea, he heard bits and snatches of conversation. There was only one topic this day: the Saint Anthony, bearing news from the Solar System.

  And of Marcia. His wife’s name on so many of the reports filled him with a special pride, and relief. He might well never see her again, though he was by no means resigned to that. At least he knew she was alive and kicking.

  And she—they, all of them—had seen the enemy. Here Earth was, in the heart of the enemy’s empire, and none of them had gotten within a hundred thousand kilometers of a Charonian of any sort.

  He took his tea to an empty table, sat down and thought.

  The Charonians, the aliens, had not offered up a single clue to their own nature, even as they flaunted their power with arrogant confidence, both here in the Multisystem, and back home. Time after time, in endless ways, they had demonstrated that they had no fear of humanity, and perhaps humans were quite literally beneath their notice. Perhaps beings that hunted planets paid life no mind, any more than a man who captured lions would even think to consider the lion’s fleas.

  Except that Earth, and Earth’s life, was so well cared for. It occurred to Gerald that humanity, no, human technology, was the only thing harmed by the move to the Multisystem. Scarcely any nonsentient species would even notice the change. Solar constant, axial tilt, the tides, even—to a very close approximation—the length of the year, all had been duplicated. Satellites, spacecraft, communication and trade were all that suffered.

  Life, then, was important to the Charonians, and they made great effort to protect it.

  It was intelligent life they held in such contempt that they could ignore it.

  A chill ran through his soul, and he whispered a silent prayer.

  But that thought, of intelligent life, had set something tickling at his memory. Something he sensed was of great importance. Marcia. Yes, she was part of it. Somewhere, back in the past. Something in graduate school, back on the Moon that no longer hung in Earth’s sky.

  Gerald leaned back in his chair and looked at the crowd, wondering what possible reason there could be for thinking of such things at a time like this.

  But he ignored that voice of doubt, and let his mind journey where it might. His subconscious was trying to tell him something, remind him of some bit of knowledge that was not recorded on a datablock. A clue hidden in his own memory. The train of thought was delicate and elusive. If he struggled too hard to understand it, he might destroy it altogether. He let it drift and carry him where it might. School. The wardroom had reminded him of school days. A lecture, and Marcia had been sitting next to him, because he remembered talking with her about it. An idea that had excited him.

  Which of his classes had it been? No, wait a second. He had been sitting in on her class. An engineering class, some wild theory the professor was spinning one day when she had covered all the planned material early.

  But what was it?

  Some wild idea in space construction. Von something.

  Gerald sat bolt upright, and nearly sent himself sprawling in zero gee. Von Neumann. That was it.

  Gerald’s blood ran cold. Von Neumann machines. A dozen pieces of the puzzle fell into place, and it was suddenly all clear to him. Horrifyingly clear.

  They would need the answer back in the Solar System, and back on Earth. And now, fast, before that CORE could get any nearer to the Saint Anthony.

  He scrambled out of his seat and headed for the comm center. It all made sense. He knew that he had got it right. But even so, he was more than half-hoping he had gotten it wrong.

  * * *

  Sondra Berghoff mumbled something in her sleep and turned over, so that her arm flopped over the edge of the cot. Marcia MacDougal, standing at the door, looked in and smiled.

  Marcia herself had been working more hours than she should have, out at the Landing Zone One observation camp, trying to pull in just a few more facts. She was more than a bit tempted to take up residence on the couch in the opposite corner for a few hours. But not yet. Not quite yet. There was so much to know about the Charonians. Marcia was still tempted by the hope—or perhaps the illusion—that one more hour of study, of thought, would be rewarded with the big answer. No one had yet been able to pull it all together, put all the pieces in one jigsaw puzzle. Marcia MacDougal wanted to be the one who did.

  Marcia and Sondra had taken over a research room at the library of Port Viking, determined to sift through the mountains of data dug up in the Solar System and on Earth. Unfortunately for Marcia’s sense of order, Sondra had gotten there first.

  Datablocks littered the floor. Printouts were stacked up everywhere. A playback unit was blaring out some bombastic piece of classical music Marcia did not recognize. Video images taken by Earthside astronomers and relayed by the Saint Anthony were up on half the screens. The other half showed images from various datataps placed on the invaders, from the lowliest of carrier bugs and scorpions up to the Lunar Wheel itself.

  The datataps, damn them, were providing torrents of information. Unfortunately, none of it seemed to mean very much. Marcia guessed Sondra had staggered toward the cot after yet another marathon session, hoping that rest would bring the answer. If there could be an answer.

  Marcia was not at all unhappy that Sondra was working alongside her. But, just now, she was glad to be alone with her own thoughts for the moment.

  Sondra seemed to need light and noise to work—and to sleep. Not Marcia. She punched buttons on her console, shut down the music and most of the video screens. The room turned dark, quiet, full of shadows and silence. Marcia MacDougal liked things that way when she was working on a research problem.

  Databanks, supercomputers, communications, reference service, comfortable chairs. No doubt about it: the facilities here were the best. Get assigned to the asteroid-invader problem, and you could have anything you wanted from the frightened Martian government.

  Everything except enough sleep.

  Marcia got up from her desk, stretched, and stumbled toward the door. Maybe a splash of water on her face would wake her up.

  She pushed the door of the study open and squinted as the bright light of the corridor struck her eyes. She made her way down the silent halls to the washroom and wasted precious Martian water
in the effort to wake herself up. She toweled off her face and stepped back out into the hall.

  She stepped over to a large, ceiling-to-floor window just past the entrance to the library. The city was quiet, and dark, and the dome was opacified, locking in as much of the day’s warmth as possible to carry the city through the night. Marcia was disappointed. She had wanted to see the stars.

  The stars. Good God, that was where her husband was now. Gerald. Gerald, where are you ? They had thought themselves tragically sundered with a paltry few hundred million kilometers between them. Now the distance between them was literally unmeasurable.

  What had that first signal said? She turned and walked back to the library. Marcia returned to her desk, shuffled through her papers, and found the first preliminary message from Earth. She studied it again, read the sad words. “Distance from Earth unknown… range estimated to be at a minimum of several hundred light years, with no upper limit.” The Earth could be on the other side of the Milky Way—or in another galaxy altogether. She read on. “Perpetrators of Earth-theft unknown. Purpose of Earth-theft unknown…”

  She dropped the paper and sighed. This Wolf Bernhardt was not an optimistic reporter, to put it mildly. Well, at least he got the facts down in a clear fashion, and that was what counted.

  Earth had survived. The people of Earth were alive— or at least most of them were. That was the real message, and the happiest possible report that could have been sent. They should all be grateful that Earth survived intact.

  But had Gerald survived? Marcia closed her eyes and crumpled up the message slip. It seemed likely, but she had no way of knowing. Nor was there anything she could do about it. It was all but certain that she would never see him again, never hear his voice or touch his hand. Perhaps, one day, there would be a message—but even if the Saint Anthony survived long enough to do such service, all the billions of people on Earth and in the Solar System would be struggling to send word through the probe. It would be a long line to wait in. Besides, the probe might be destroyed at any moment by God only knew what. It might be a long time—or forever—before she could get or receive word.