by Dan Simmons
De Soya watches out the window as the two figures in combat armor break the surface of the river and hover five meters above it, water pouring from their suits.
“I think they must’ve been stranded here after the Fall, sir,” Gregorius is saying, “and just decided to end it all there, sir. It’s only a guess, Father Captain, but I have a hunch.…”
“I have a hunch you’re right, Sergeant,” says de Soya. “Come on back.” He opens the dropship hatch as the suited figures fly toward it.
Before they arrive, while he is still alone, de Soya raises his hand and mouths a blessing of the river, the sunken craft, and those entombed there. The Church does not sanctify suicides, but the Church knows that little is certain in life or death. Or, at least, de Soya knows this, even if the Church does not.
THEY LEAVE MOTION DETECTORS SENDING BEAMS across each of the portals—they will not catch the girl and her allies, but they will tell the troops de Soya will send back whether anyone has passed that way in the interim—and then they lift the dropship from NGCes 2629-4BIV, tuck the stubby dropship into the ugly mass of Raphael above the gleaming limb of the cloud-swirled planet, and accelerate out of the world’s gravity well so that they can translate to their next stop, Barnard’s World.
This is as close as de Soya’s pursuit itinerary will come to Old Earth System—a mere six light-years—and since this was one of the earliest interstellar colonies of the pre-Hegira era, the priest-captain likes to think that he will be getting a glimpse back in time of Old Earth itself. Upon resurrection in the Pax base some six AUs from Barnard’s World, however, de Soya immediately notes the differences. Barnard’s Star is a red dwarf, only about one fifth the mass of Old Earth’s G-type star, and less than 1/2500 the luminosity. Only the proximity of Barnard’s World, 0.126 AU, and the centuries spent terraforming the planet have produced a world high on the adaptive Solmev Scale. But, as de Soya and his men discover upon being ferried to the planet by their Pax escort, the terraforming has been very successful indeed.
Barnard’s World had suffered very much from the Ouster Swarm invasion preceding the Fall, and very little—relatively speaking—from the Fall itself. The world had been a pleasant contradiction in terms in Web days: overwhelmingly agricultural, growing mostly Old Earth imports such as corn, wheat, soybeans, and the like, but also profoundly intellectual—boasting hundreds of the finest small colleges in the Web. The combination of agricultural backwater—life on Barnard’s World tended to imitate small-town life in North America, circa 1900—and intellectual hot spot had brought some of the Hegemony’s finest scholars, writers, and thinkers there.
After the Fall, Barnard’s World relied more upon its agricultural heritage than its intellectual prowess. When the Pax arrived in force some five decades after the Fall, its brand of born-again Christianity and Pacem-based government was resisted for some years. Barnard’s World had been self-sufficient and wished to remain that way. It was not formally accepted into the Pax until the Year of Our Lord 3061, some 212 years after the Fall, and then only after bloody civil war between the Catholics and partisan bands loosely grouped under the name The Free Believers.
Now, as de Soya learns during his brief tour with Archbishop Herbert Stern, the many colleges lie empty or have been converted to seminaries for the young men and women of Barnard’s World. The partisans have all but disappeared, although there is still some resistance in the wild forest-and-canyon areas along the river known as Turkey Run.
Turkey Run had been part of the River Tethys, and it is precisely there that de Soya and his men wish to go. On their fifth day in-system, they travel there with a protective guard of sixty Pax troopers and some of the Archbishop’s own elite guard.
They meet no partisans. This bit of the Tethys runs through broad valleys, under high shale cliffs, through deciduous forests of Old Earth-transplanted trees, and emerges into what has long since become tilled land—mostly cornfields sprinkled with the occasional white farmhouse and outbuildings. It does not look like a place of violence to de Soya, and he encounters none there.
The Pax skimmers search the forest well for any sign of the girl’s ship, but they find none. The river of Turkey Run is too shallow to hide a ship—Major Andy Ford, the Pax officer in charge of their search, calls it “the sweetest canoeing river this side of Sugar Creek”—and the section of River Tethys had been only a few klicks long here. Barnard’s World has modern atmosphere and orbital traffic control, and no ship could have left the area without being tracked. Interviews with farmers in the Turkey Run area produce no talk of strangers. In the end, Pax military, the Archbishop’s diocesan council, and local civil authorities pledge constant surveillance of the area, despite any threat of Free Believer harassment.
On their eighth day de Soya and his men take leave of scores of people who can only be referred to as newfound friends, rise to orbit, transfer to a Pax torchship, and are escorted back to the deep-orbit Barnard’s Star garrison and their archangel ship. The last sight de Soya glimpses of the bucolic world is the twin spires of the giant cathedral rising in the capital of St. Thomas, formerly known as Bussard City.
SWINGING AWAY FROM THE DIRECTION OF OLD Earth System now, de Soya, Gregorius, Kee, and Rettig awaken in System Lacaille 9352, about as far from Old Earth as Tau Ceti had been to the early seedships. Here the delay is neither bureaucratic nor military, but environmental. The Web world here, known as Sibiatu’s Bitterness then and renamed Inevitable Grace by its current population of a few thousand Pax colonists, had been environmentally marginal then and is far below that now. The River Tethys had run under twelve kilometers of Perspex tunnel, holding in breathable air and pressure. Those tunnels had fallen into decay more than two centuries ago, the water boiling away in the low pressure, the thin methane-ammonia atmosphere of the planet rushing in to fill the empty river-banks and shattered Perspex tubes.
De Soya has no idea why the Web would have included this rock in its River Tethys. There is no Pax military garrison here, nor serious Church presence other than chaplains living with the highly religious colonists eking out a living with their boxite mines and sulfur pits, but de Soya and his men convince some of these colonists to take them to the former river.
“If she come this way, she died,” says Gregorius as he inspects the huge portals hanging over a straight line of ruined Perspex and dry riverbeds. The methane wind blows, and grains of ever-shifting dust try to find their way through the men’s atmosphere suits.
“Not if she stayed in the ship,” says de Soya, turning ponderously in his suit to look up at the orange-yellow sky. “The colonists wouldn’t have noticed the ship leaving … it’s too far from the colony.”
The grizzled man with them, a bent figure even in his worn and sandblasted suit, grunts behind his visor. “Zat bey true, Fadder. We-en denna gay outsed a star-gazen’ too offen, bey true.”
De Soya and his men discuss the futility of ordering Pax troops to this sort of world to watch for the girl in the months and years to come.
“It’s a fact that it’ll be god-awful, miserable, ass-end-of-nowhere duty, sir,” says Gregorius. “Pardon the language, Father.”
De Soya nods distractedly. They have left the last of the motion-sensor beacons there: five worlds explored out of two hundred, and he is running out of material. The thought of sending troops back here depresses him as well, but he can see little alternative. Besides the resurrection ache and emotional confusion coursing through him constantly now, there is growing depression and doubt. He feels like an ancient, blind cat sent to catch a mouse, but unable to watch and guard two hundred mouseholes simultaneously. Not for the first time does he wish he were in the Outback, fighting Ousters.
As if reading the father-captain’s thoughts, Gregorius says, “Sir, have ye really looked at the itinerary Raphael’s set for us?”
“Yes, Sergeant. Why?”
“Some o’ the places we’re headed ain’t ours anymore, Captain. It’s not till the later part of
the trip … worlds way in the Outback … but the ship wants to take us to planets’ve been overrun by the Ousters long ago, sir.”
De Soya nods tiredly. “I know, Sergeant. I didn’t specify battle areas or the Great Wall defensive zones when I told the ship’s computer to plan the trip.”
“There’s eighteen worlds that would be a bit dicey to visit,” says Gregorius with the hint of a grin. “Seeing as how the Ousters own ’em now.”
De Soya nods again but says nothing.
It is Corporal Kee who says softly, “If you want to go look there, sir, we’ll be more than happy to go with you.”
The priest-captain looks up at the faces of the three men. He has taken their loyalty and presence too much for granted, he thinks. “Thank you,” he says simply. “We’ll decide when we get to that part of the … tour.”
“Which may be about a hundred standard years from now at this rate,” says Rettig.
“It may indeed,” says de Soya. “Let’s strap in and get the hell out of here.”
They translate out of the system.
• • •
STILL IN THE OLD NEIGHBORHOOD, HARDLY OUT OF Old Earth’s pre-Hegira backyard, they jump to two heavily terraformed worlds spinning through their complicated choreography in the half-light-year space between Epsilon Eridani and Epsilon Indi.
The Omicron2-Epsilon3 Eurasian Habitation Experiment had been a bold pre-Hegira Utopian effort to achieve against-all-odds terraforming and political perfection—primarily neo-Marxist—on hostile worlds while fleeing from hostile forces. It had failed miserably. The Hegemony had replaced the Utopians with FORCE: space bases and automated refueling stations, but the press of Outback-bound seedships and then spinships passing through the Old Neighborhood region during the Hegira had led to successful terraforming of these two dark worlds spinning between the dim Epsilon Eridani sun and the dimmer Epsilon Indi star. Then the famous defeat of Glennon-Height’s fleet there had sealed the twin-system’s fame and military importance. The Pax has rebuilt the abandoned FORCE bases, regenerated the failing terraform systems.
De Soya’s searching of these two River sections is dry and businesslike in a military way. Each of the Tethys segments is so deep in military reservation area that it soon becomes obvious there is no chance that the girl—much less the ship—could have passed through in the past two months without being detected and run to ground. De Soya had surmised this from knowing about the Epsilon System—he has passed through there several times himself on his travels to the Great Wall and beyond—but had decided that he needed to see the portals for himself.
It is good that they encounter this garrison system at this time in their travels, however, for both Kee and Rettig are hospitalized. Engineers and Church resurrection specialists examine Raphael in dry dock and determine that there are minute but serious errors in the automated resurrection creche. Three standard days are spent in making repairs.
When they translate out of system this time, with only one more stop in the Old Neighborhood before moving into the post-Hegira reaches of the old Web, it is with the earnest hope that their health, depression, and emotional instability will be improved if they have to undergo automated resurrection again.
“Where are you headed now?” asks Father Dimitrius, the resurrection specialist who has helped them over the past days.
De Soya hesitates only a second before answering. It cannot compromise his mission if he tells the elderly priest this one fact.
“Mare Infinitus,” he says. “It’s a water world some three parsecs outward bound and two light-years above the plane of—”
“Ah, yes,” says the old priest. “I had a mission there decades ago, weaning the indigenie fisherfolk from their paganism and bringing them into Christ’s light.” The white-haired priest raises his hand in a benediction. “Whatever you seek, Father Captain de Soya, it is my sincere prayer that you find it there.”
DE SOYA ALMOST LEAVES MARE INFINITUS BEFORE sheer chance brings him the clue he has been seeking.
It is their sixty-third day of seeking, only the second day since resurrection in their creches aboard the orbital Pax station, and the beginning of what should be their last day on the planet.
A talkative young man named Lieutenant Baryn Alan Sproul is de Soya’s liaison from Pax Seventy Ophiuchi A Fleet Command, and like tour guides throughout history, the youngster gives de Soya and his troopers more background than they want to hear. But he is a good thopter pilot, and on this ocean world in a flying machine that is relatively unfamiliar to him, de Soya is pleased to be passenger rather than pilot, and he relaxes some while Sproul takes them south, away from the extensive floating city of St. Thérèse, and into the empty fishing areas where the farcasters still float.
“Why are the portals so far apart here?” asks Gregorius.
“Ah, well,” says Lieutenant Sproul, “there’s a story to that.”
De Soya catches his sergeant’s eye. Gregorius almost never smiles unless combat is imminent, but de Soya has grown familiar with a certain glint in the big man’s eye that is the sergeant’s equivalent of riotous laughter.
“… so the Hegemony wanted to build its River Tethys portals out here in addition to the orbital sphere they had and all the little farcasters they set up everywhere … sort of a silly idea, isn’t it, sir? Putting part of a river through the ocean here? … anyway, they wanted it out in the Mid-littoral Current, which makes some sense because it’s where the leviathans and some of the more interesting ’canths are, if the Web tourists wanted to see fish, that is … but the problem is, well, it’s pretty obvious …”
De Soya looks over to where Corporal Kee is dozing in the warm sunlight coming through his thopter blister.
“It’s pretty obvious that there’s nothing permanent to build something big like those portals on … and you’ll see ‘em in a minute, sir, they’re big. Well, I mean, there are the coral rings—but they’re not secured to anything, they float, and the yellowkelp islands, but they’re not … I mean, you put a foot on them, it goes right through, if you know what I mean, sir.… There, to the starboard side, sir. That’s yellowkelp. Don’t get too much of it this far south. Anyway, what the old Hegemony engineers did is, they rigged the portals sort of like we’ve been doing with the platforms and cities for the last five hundred years, sir. That is, they run these foundation bases a couple of hundred fathoms—big, heavy things they’ve got to be, sir—and then run big, bladed drag anchors out on cables beneath that. But the bottom of the ocean here is sort of a problematic thing … usually ten thousand fathoms, at least … that’s where the big granddaddies of our surface ’canths like Lamp Mouth live, sir … monsters down that deep, sir … klicks long …”
“Lieutenant,” says de Soya, “what does this have to do with why the portals are so far apart?” The high, almost ultrasonic hum of the thopter’s dragonfly wings are threatening to put the priest-captain to sleep. Kee is now snoring, and Rettig has his feet up and his eyes closed. It has been a long flight.
Sproul grins. “Getting to that, sir. You see, with those keel-weights and twenty klicks of cable trailing to rock, our cities and platforms don’t go very far, even in the Big Tide season, no, sir. But these portals … well, we have lots of submarine volcanic activity on Mare-Eye, sir. Whole different ‘cology down there, believe me. Some of them tube worms’d give those gigacanths a battle, honestly, sir. Anyway, the old Webdays’ engineers fixed those portals so that if their keelweights and cables sensed volcanic activity under them, they’d just … well, migrate, sir, is the best word I can think of.”
“So,” says de Soya, “the distance between the River Tethys portals has widened because of volcanic activity on the ocean floor?”
“Yes, sir, “ says Lieutenant Sproul with a wide grin that seems to suggest both pleasure and amazement that a Fleet officer can comprehend such a thing. “And there’s one of them now, sir,” says the liaison officer with a flourish, banking the thopter into a descending spi
ral. He brings the machine into a hover just a few meters above the ancient arch. Twenty meters below that, the violet sea churns and splashes against the rusted metal at the portal’s base.
De Soya rubs his face. None of them can throw off the fatigue any longer. Perhaps if they had a few more days between resurrection and death.
“Can we see the other portal now, please?” he says.
“Yes, sir!” The thopter buzzes just meters above the waves as it covers the two hundred klicks to the next arch. De Soya does doze, and when he wakes to the lieutenant’s gentle nudging, the second portal arch is visible against the sea. It is late afternoon, and the low sun throws a long shadow on the violet sea.
“Very good,” says de Soya. “And the deep-radar searches are still being carried out?”
“Yes, sir,” says the young pilot. “They’re widening the search radius, but so far they haven’t seen anything but some hellacious big Lamp Mouths. That gets the sports-fishing guys worked up, I can tell you.”
“That’s a major industry here, I take it, sir,” rumbles Gregorius from his place on the jump seat behind the pilot.
“Yes, Sergeant,” says Sproul, craning his long neck around to look at the bigger man. “With kelp harvesting way down, it’s our biggest offworld source of income.”
De Soya points to a platform only a few kilometers away. “Another fishing and refueling platform?” The priest-captain has spent a day with the Pax commanders, going over reports from small outposts like this all over the world. None have reported any contact with a ship, or sight of a child. During this long flight south to the portals, they have passed dozens of similar platforms.
“Yes, sir,” says Sproul. “Shall I hover for a while, or have you seen enough?”
De Soya looks at the portal—arching high above them now as the thopter hovers meters above the sea—and says, “We can get back, Lieutenant. We have a formal dinner with Bishop Melandriano tonight.”
