by Nancy Kress
Silence. The tunnel came into visual perception.
“You got that? They won’t suffer. That’s not what I wanted when Karen died. I wanted the bastards who killed her to be as torn apart and still breathing, as I was. You want that, too. I know.”
Kaufman thought he had never heard a silence as profound as that in the flyer. Magdalena’s profile, intent on her displays, told him nothing.
Capelo continued in the same rough, flat voice. “You can make them suffer. Stefanak is dead, but those soldiers who vaporized your son, who gave the order to do that, are still alive. They can be made to suffer the way you do, and I did, which is through people they love. That can only happen if you don’t destroy spacetime. Keep spacetime intact before you start getting even. Keep spacetime intact just so the people you choose to kill can be missed, and mourned, and wept over, and the ones you punish will want to die because of what you do to them.”
Cold crept down Kaufman’s spine. This was reasoning that never would have occurred to him, reasoning that should never occur to anybody. This poison was inside Capelo, inside Magdalena …
“Keep spacetime intact, Magdalena. Help us do that. You for your reasons, we for ours. The end is the same. The means are the same. We can aid each other to get there. For Laslo.”
At her son’s name Magdalena’s body jerked, as if an electric wire had been held to her skin. Kaufman thought, Tom went too far. But then Magdalena turned, and he could see her face instead of just her profile.
“Tell me how,” she said, at the same moment that the warship on this side of the Allenby-Artemis Tunnel said, “Flyer, identify self,” and Kaufman realized how close to destruction, once more, they had run.
* * *
They were cleared without incident on both sides of the tunnel, although they had to wait in queue. The flyer drifted, idle. Finally the tunnel guard cleared them, adding, “Artemis System welcomes you,” proof that the guard unit dealt as often with civilians as with military. Nobody else had welcomed them anywhere.
Artemis System had five planets, two gas giants, and three rockballs. Colonies flourished on one planet, two large moons, and in a variety of orbitals. Only five tunnels away from the Solar System and boasting five tunnels of its own, Artemis had been a popular expansion star. It had also been the first human settlement the Fallers attacked when they started their inexplicable war. They had come roaring out of one of the Artemis tunnels twenty-eight years ago, thirty years after humans had first discovered the tunnels. Apparently it had been human tunnel exploration in their home system that had alerted the Fallers to the existence of their own tunnels. No human had ever reached the Faller home system again.
For a decade, emigration to Artemis had halted, and many colonists went home. The military moved in, fortifying Tunnel #218, the Fallers’ arrival route, until it no longer was worth Faller losses to attack humanity by that route. Eventually the colonists returned. The system’s habitable planet, Baraquio, was as lush and rich as World was, as Terra had once been. Baraquio had no sentient life to be disturbed by humanity’s raucous presence. The colonists began to feel as safe as they did anywhere else.
The system’s five tunnels were clustered fairly close together. The tunnel on the route to Sol, Tunnel #212, lay the farthest from Magdalena’s flyer, fifty thousand clicks. In the same direction lay three more tunnels. In the opposite direction, seven thousand clicks away, floated their next goal. All space tunnels stayed stationary and exerted no gravity on each other; no one knew why either fact was so. If the five tunnels hadn’t been clustered so closely together in a predictable pattern, Kaufman’s plan would have had no chance at all of succeeding. Now, he thought grimly, it had perhaps one chance in five. Maybe.
The flyer’s next—and last—clearance from Hofsetter was to refuel at Artemis Station. This was an enormous commercial station drifting five hundred clicks away, in the direction of the permanent, heavy fortifications walling off Space Tunnel #218—the tunnel to Q space, and from there to the Fallers’ star. Artemis Station was a popular leave destination for the sailors stuck on the fortification ships.
Magdalena had the conn. Kaufman didn’t know how long he’d been flying; time between tunnels seemed to have passed with weird rapidity. The flyer drifted, in free fall. Strapped into the pilot seat, she leaned so close over the displays that she occasionally interfered with his view. He didn’t reprimand her. She was as taut and carefully balanced as a space-elevator cable, and just as dangerous if she snapped.
“How close can we get to Tunnel Two-one-eight?” she asked.
“Nobody will stop us while we’re still heading toward Artemis Station,” Kaufman answered, although of course she already knew that. She was talking solely to avoid silence. He didn’t want to imagine what images filled her silence.
“Yes. And after that … it depends on Capelo, doesn’t it? Maybe he can do it. He did a good enough job with me.” She laughed, a sound so unexpected and harsh that Kaufman glanced at her in concern.
“Don’t stare at me, Kaufman. I’m going to get you there, aren’t I? Get yourself ready. All of you. You, too, Sensitive. This thing rides on you, God fuck us all.”
Kaufman let her give the orders. He unstrapped, floated to the storage closets, and pulled out a military, state-of-the-art EVA s-suit that Magdalena should not have had. The flyer carried four such suits, taking up nearly all available storage space. To get out the third one, Kaufman had to float it over Rory’s still unconscious body.
Kaufman was adept at military suiting in free fall. Marbet and Capelo, however, had never done it. He got them dressed, Capelo cursing creatively, and then ran checks on his suit and each of theirs. When he finished with Marbet’s, she pushed awkwardly into him and kissed him on the lips. “For luck,” she whispered. He smiled at her and then forgot her, as he was trained to do, in concentration on the task ahead.
Magdalena said, “Ready? Here we go.” She accelerated at a sedate one-gee. Gravity returned and Kaufman carefully positioned Marbet, Capelo, and himself, Capelo where he could be heard dearly by the comlink. Their helmets went on. Awkward, but later on they wouldn’t be able to do it. All the helmet comlinks were open.
“Open the flyer link to all unencrypted military frequencies,” Kaufman told Magdalena. She did. Now no one could say anything except what they’d planned.
Artemis Station loomed on the view screen. As always, a lot of traffic came and went at the station and Magdalena’s flyer attracted no particular notice. It was registering, of course, on dozens of displays, but no one hailed them.
They flew past Artemis Station at one-gee.
From where he stood, Kaufman could see the flyer displays. Space Tunnel #218 appeared as a red spot: “Highly Restricted.” Six-thousand, five-hundred-eighty clicks away. The flyer was moving at 3.132 clicks per second.
Magdalena slammed the flyer into three-gee acceleration. Kaufman was pressed against the bulkhead, the familiar weight pushing on his chest. Instantly the comlink said, “Flyer number 1264A, you have entered a restricted zone. Return immediately to Artemis Station.”
No one answered.
“Flyer number 1264A, you have entered a restricted zone! Return immediately to Artemis Station!”
The flyer sped on. Six-thousand, one-hundred clicks to the tunnel.
“Flyer number 1264A, if you do not immediately leave this restricted zone and return to Artemis Station, you will be fired upon. Turn back.”
Let Capelo remember what to do …
“This is Dr. Thomas Capelo,” he gasped through the crushing gravity. “Don’t shoot! I’ve escaped from Stefanak’s troops!”
Brief silence. So one or more OOD’s had recognized Tom’s name. One hurdle successfully jumped.
“Dr. Capelo, return instantly to Artemis Station!”
“I can’t. I don’t know how to pilot the ship. I just killed…” Capelo deliberately gasped and trailed off, then added, “Help me!”
Now other frequencies
came in on Magdalena’s highly illegal military scanner, a jumble of voices on fleet frequencies.
“Shoot, damn it! Regs say—”
“If it’s really him—”
“—in trouble—”
“—don’t care who the fuck it is just—”
And one shrill, young voice, “Wake up the old man!”
Four-thousand, one-hundred clicks to the tunnel.
An older, more decisive voice. “Dr. Capelo, or whoever is aboard Flyer number 1264A, you must return to Artemis Station, Decelerate and turn.”
“The autopilot won’t let me override,” Tom gasped. “Please don’t shoot, I have the equations … that Admiral Pierce wanted … don’t…”
“What does he mean, ‘won’t let him override’? What the fuck—”
“—no proof it’s him—”
“If I shoot down Thomas Capelo—”
“—Protector Artifact—”
A still more decisive voice: “Dr. Capelo, this is your last warning. You are approaching highly restricted space. Decelerate and return to Artemis Station immediately or you will he vaporized.”
“I can’t!” Tom screamed, rising to heights of insane fury despite the gravity like boulders. “If you … shoot me … first tell Admiral Pierce … listen, record this now! F squared times the cube of gamma sigma minus … Are you bastards recording this?”
Despite everything, Kaufman grinned. Throw enough scientific gibberish at non-scientists and they always faltered. Bewildered worshippers at the veiled shrine.
“It’s what will win the fucking war!” Capelo bellowed. “Record it before you bastards shoot me!”
And somewhere in the fleet, on a link to a few buddies, not knowing he was overhead, some intelligent science admirer said, “You know … it sounds like Capelo.”
Two thousand clicks to the tunnel.
Marbet, jammed beside him in the airlock already open on the inside, groped with her heavy hand at his suit. She couldn’t connect, but he saw the futile movement. There was no way to tell her, Not yet.
He wondered if anyone was in fact writing any of Tom’s equations down. Of course, they were being recorded everywhere. But sometimes, faced with a raving genius, people forgot that. Capelo, hoarse, yelled about setting prime eleven and macro-entanglement and splitting Faller ships like melons from ranges too distant to be detected.
A thousand clicks to the tunnel.
The silence stretched on. Somewhere, on encrypted frequencies not accessible to the flyer, rapid and desperate conferences went on.
“Prepare to fire at my command…”
The flyer went into spectacular evasive maneuvers. That would do it, Kaufman knew. No civilian craft with a malfunctioning computer could do that. “Commence firing!” came over the comlink.
Not close enough!
But Magdalena’s software was also state-of-the-art. She bough them another ten seconds through maneuvering. It couldn’t last, but ten seconds helped …
The airlock door opened. Kaufman, Capelo, and Marbet were ejected into space.
They could no longer hear communications from the warships of the fleet.
* * *
She scarcely noticed they had gone. She was one with the computer, dodging and turning, every atom of her tuned to a single vibrating frequency. She was one with the ship, appearing with all the others on the display screen. Most of all, she was one with the proton beam, wide and full strength. It was she who hurled, silent and at light speed, across the void at the enemy.
Again: a miss. Dodge, move. Again: miss.
Time had slowed down. There was all the time in the world as she/they (the computer, the ship, the beam) executed each evasion, each attack. She/they moved with sureness and unfailing rightness through the endless time.
But she/they weren’t alone. Two others were there beside her, the only two she had ever loved, completing the world. As it should be. Sualeen smiled at her.
Sualeen …
A warship exploded silently, brilliantly, and disappeared from her display.
And on her other side, his hand on her arm, filling the endless time with happiness, sat Laslo.
Laslo.…
A second ship disappeared from the display.
Now Laslo smiled at her. Magdalena turned to smile back, and everything was whole again, everything justified, as the flyer was hit and vaporized and Magdalena joined her beloved son.
TWENTY-SEVEN
IN Q SPACE
Just before ejection Kaufman had caught one last glimpse at the displays: Seven hundred clicks to the tunnel. He, Capelo, and Marbet were moving at eighteen clicks per second, the flyer’s speed. Space Tunnel #218, leading to the enigmatic Q space was seven hundred clicks away. They would reach it in thirty-eight seconds, unless they were shot down or off-course.
He and Capelo, Kaufman saw with a sudden rush of shit to the heart, were off-course. Marbet was aimed right at the tunnel, an on target human projectile. Kaufman pushed all thoughts of Magdalena from his mind and used his jets to correct his course.
He had hastily told Capelo how to do this. Capelo was a civilian and had never EVA’d before. Capelo had also completed his part of the job, delaying their being shot down just long enough to be ejected close to the tunnel. Capelo was expendable, just as Magdalena had been expendable. Kaufman calculated this swiftly, one human part of his mind hating the calculations, one military part knowing them necessary and right.
Twenty-three seconds.
Kaufman’s theory had been that the tunnel fleet’s sensors were set to ignore anything heading for the tunnel—but not, of course, coming out of it—if the intruder had a small mass. Otherwise, the warships would be constantly firing proton beams at meteors, increasing their chances of hitting each other or patrolling flyers. Twenty years ago, when Kaufman had seen combat, this had been not theory but fact, and the cut-off mass had been ninety kilos. Capelo and Marbet, small people, didn’t mass that even in their suits. Kaufman was close, but just under the limit.
The limit had grown steadily smaller over the last twenty years, and Kaufman wasn’t sure exactly how small it was now. The navy might vaporize Kaufman, or all three of them, in the next twenty-three seconds. If not, the Fallers might do it on the other side.
Kaufman stared steadily ahead at the space tunnel, growing larger by the second, and waited to die. From the corner of his eye he saw Capelo’s course lurch abruptly. God, a correction like that at three-gees could crack a rib, or worse. If Capelo succeeded in reaching the tunnel, he might go through it already dead.
Fifteen seconds.
Apparently the navy sensors still ignored anything under ninety kilos heading into a space tunnel.
Capelo’s speeding body jerked again. He appeared to be on course. Beginner’s luck? Not if he’d fatally injured himself doing it.
Marbet was the one who mattered the most. She was the only human being who had ever talked … no, you couldn’t call it talking. Who had ever communicated with a Faller. It had taken her months to learn how, and the communication had at best been partial and grudging and inconclusive, but she had done it. Let her have the chance to do it again!
Ten seconds.
Going through a space tunnel in a ship felt like nothing at all. What did it feel like in an s-suit? Kaufman might never have the chance to register whatever his senses picked up from the trip, because the Fallers might very well blow into ions everything that came through to Q space, on their side of the tunnel. No matter how small the intruder’s mass. A very small mass could be a nuclear bomb.
Kaufman was counting on exactly that fact. A bomb that detonated the second it came through could take out guard ships. That’s why you didn’t station your fleet too close to the tunnel. There was space between, enough space to protect the ships, enough space to allow identification of whatever came through the tunnel before you vaporized it. Enough time, perhaps, to see that it was three unarmed human beings, or three human beings anyway. Time to decid
e, as those three humans continued to speed across Q space, if you wanted to destroy them—or if you wanted to risk one flyer to pick them up and find out why they had tumbled out of a star system hundreds of light-years away into your star system despite the war.
How much curiosity did Fallers have about their enemy? Enough to monitor human broadcasts, which was more than humans had been able to do with theirs.
Five seconds.
The gray “fog” inside the tunnel wasn’t misty, like fog on Earth. It looked solid as stone. Yet Kaufman saw Marbet Grant rush through it as if through vacuum. A fraction of a second later Kaufman followed her. He tried to keep his eyes open, but the blink reaction, at hitting what looked like a solid wall, was too strong. Kaufman blinked.
And sailed through the tunnel into Q space, expecting to die, literally before he knew it.
* * *
He didn’t die. The Faller ships didn’t fire.
Kaufman couldn’t see them. He saw Marbet and Capelo ahead of him. Marbet was slowing; she had used her jets, as he was now doing. Capelo was not. That probably meant he was too injured to do so. Helpless, Kaufman watched Thomas Capelo dwindle and disappear into the blackness of space.
The Faller ships still hadn’t fired.
They’d had time to do so. Possibly that meant the Faller craft were conferring, deciding what to do. They didn’t take prisoners, and may or may not have known that one of theirs had been taken prisoner two years ago. Would that change their policy? They had never before been offered humans like this: alive, naked of all spacecraft, in a Faller-controlled area like Q space. In their own empty front yard.
Somewhere in that yard, if the best military minds in SADC were right, floated the Faller’s artifact.
At least the Fallers could see that Kaufman, Capelo, and Marbet hadn’t brought the human artifact with them. It was too big to miss. The three humans might very well be armed with everything up to nuclears, but they didn’t carry the other artifact.
