by Paul McAuley
She patched him with a soporific and he dozed in a cot at the back of the chopshop, woke to find the ship’s telemetry crowding his vision. He closed the windows, opened the q-phone link.
‘There you are!’ the bridle said. ‘I was beginning to think I’d come to the wrong place.’
‘What do you mean? Where are you?’
‘I’m here! I’m here!’
One of the windows opened, dense with navigation code. Tony checked it and laughed with shock and happiness. Abalunam’s Pride was in orbit around Veles.
45. Lodestar
Lisa hated every moment of the trip to Ada Morange’s timeship, a terrifying jaunt in an Orion capsule piloted by a cheerful Nigerian astronaut. The noisy kick-in-the pants launch and the long free-fall arc across naked vacuum. The cramped interior, with its rigid padded seats like dentists’ chairs and quaint computer interfaces and joysticks, laughably primitive compared with the lifesystems built into Ghajar ships. Eye-burning splinters of sunlight sweeping across the glass portholes because the capsule was rotating to even out temperature differences.
The astronaut told her that the capsule had been slated for a mission to a near-Earth asteroid when the arrival of the Jackaroo had put an end to the dream of manned exploration of the solar system. ‘Developing this baby cost around fifty billion dollars. And now we use it as a space taxi. Such a shame. That’s why this thing is so important. Why we need to understand everything about the tech we use now. Because if we can’t control it, it will control us. The Professor was one of the first people to see that. And she’s the only person, now, who can do something about it. It’s a great thing to be part of.’
There was an alarming popping sound like distant gunfire – ‘Attitude thrusters killing our rotation, perfectly normal,’ the astronaut said – and the timeship drifted into view. Its fat cylinder, a kilometre long and swollen at either end, somewhat resembled a human thigh bone. Almost all of its bulk, according to the astronaut, was shielding built up from fullerene foam, titanium honeycomb, ceramic tiles and layers of tough elastomers, designed to absorb and dissipate the terrific energies of collisions at near light-speed with any stray hydrogen atoms or microscopic grains of interstellar dust that managed to penetrate its protective magnetic fields.
‘The things we can do now,’ he said, and manoeuvred his frail craft towards the midpoint of this forbiddingly Gothic object, sliding into the circular mouth of a pit cut deep in the shielding, and docking with an airlock that led to the J-class Ghajar ship buried inside.
An access shaft at the midpoint of the ship’s central corridor led to the carousel ring that, spinning between the exterior of the ship’s lifesystem and the inner surface of its hull to generate a centrifugal imitation of gravity, housed Ada Morange’s medical suite. Lisa had to wait for half an hour in a cubicle, with a cheerful steward looking in every five minutes to tell her that it would not be long before she was at last admitted to the inner sanctum.
Unlikely Worlds stood by Ada Morange’s elevated hospital bed, his baritone booming across the curved, dimly lit room when Lisa entered. ‘I hear that you have been travelling far and wide in search of your lodestar. It’s all so very exciting!’
‘You pretend that everything excites you, you old fraud,’ Ada Morange said. ‘Please, Ms Dawes, come and sit with me.’
Her head was cushioned by soft white pillows. Her body barely disturbed the starched sheet that covered it. Tubing ran to machines that oxygenated, cleansed and pumped artificial blood. An IV bag was feeding, drop by drop, a clear liquid to a cannula in the crook of her emaciated arm. She thumbed a button on the remote control she gripped in her right hand, all knuckles and ropy veins under crepe skin. The bed responded by elevating her pillowed head as Lisa sat beside her on a hard plastic chair.
‘You have met my old friend Adam Nevers,’ she said. ‘What did you think of him?’
‘That he’s a scrupulously polite asshole who uses his position to pursue his own agenda.’
‘I see that he got under your skin. You should not take it personally. It’s a talent he has.’
‘He killed my dog,’ Lisa confessed, and told Ada Morange about the interrogation and the raids on her homestead.
‘He has not much changed,’ Ada Morange said, when Lisa had finished. ‘Does he still believe that he is my nemesis?’
‘He warned me about you.’
‘I expect he did.’ Ada Morange’s eyes were sharp blue. The shifting colours of the screens that kept her in contact with the happening world played across her gaunt face. Her hair was brushed out on either side, white wings on the white pillow. ‘As you can see, I contend with something more serious than Investigator Nevers. I survived an immunodeficiency-associated lymphoma, and now I am slowly dying of an autoimmune disease. At the moment, I am being treated with tailored prions. Like all the other treatments, it has only a transient effect. Soon I will have to make a choice. To die, or to set out into a voyage into the future. Do you know why this is called a timeship?’
‘It’s something to do with travelling close to the speed of light, so that time passes more slowly on board than elsewhere.’
Isabelle had told Lisa all about it, with the kind of reverence with which an art historian might describe an obscure masterpiece.
‘There is a star some two hundred light years from Terminus,’ Ada Morange said. ‘It is orbited by several wormholes, so that when I reach it I can quickly return home. But to get there, I will travel across interstellar space. My crew will place me in a hypothermal coma and we will accelerate at one gravity until we reach, as you have said, a cruising speed a little under the speed of light. The journey will take two centuries, but by the clocks aboard the timeship, slowed by Einsteinian time dilation, just ten years will have passed. So when I arrive at the star I will have also travelled into the future, where perhaps a cure for my illness will have been discovered. Or a way to upload my mind into another substrate or transfer it to another body. I am presently sponsoring research into those areas, and others that may be of use, but as far as I am concerned progress is frustratingly slow. The timeship will enable me to jump to a point where those projects have come to fruition. No doubt you think that it is a crazy plan.’
‘It’s definitely ambitious.’
‘You are being polite. Even I think it is more than a little crazy. And I hope very much that I will not need it. I hope every day for a breakthrough in the search for a cure, or for another solution. Not because of the risks of an interstellar voyage that no one has ever before attempted, or because it will mean leaving behind my company and my fortune, and everything familiar. But because I am worried about what I may find, two hundred years in the future. We once supposed that there would be a steady advance in science, but that is no longer the case. In two hundred years, we may be as gods. But it is also possible that misuse of Elder Culture technology and reckless expansion into the New Frontier will destroy us. I may arrive in a future where most settlements have died out, and the survivors have devolved to hunter-gatherers who tell each other campfire stories of gods who fell from the sky.’ Ada Morange turned her head to look at Unlikely Worlds, on the other side of the bed. ‘Perhaps it has happened before. To previous clients of the Jackaroo.’
‘It’s an interesting idea,’ Unlikely Worlds said.
Ada Morange smiled at Lisa. ‘As I am sure you have by now realised, he grows evasive when the conversation turns to things one needs to know. In that regard, he is exactly like the Jackaroo.’
‘With respect, that shows how little you have learned about the Jackaroo,’ Unlikely Worlds said.
‘One thing I do know about them,’ Ada Morange told Lisa. ‘They are not really here to help. We are no more than their latest experiment. Investigator Nevers still has a close association with them, doesn’t he? Do you think he realises that they are using him?’
‘I wondered that myself,’ Lisa said.
‘We tell ourselves that we have won independence
from the Jackaroo because we no longer rely on their shuttles to travel between Earth and the fifteen gift worlds,’ Ada Morange said. ‘And because we can freely explore the worlds of the New Frontier. But in truth we have exchanged one kind of dependency for another. The sargassos of Ghajar ships are one of our most important resources, but we know almost nothing about them. We do not know, for instance, why the Ghajar abandoned so many ships, or why there are some, the so-called mad ships, which we cannot even approach, let alone try to use. The popular theory is that there was a war. That the mad ships were some kind of ultimate weapon that ended it, and were abandoned by the victors, along with ships captured from their defeated enemy. It is as plausible as any other guess. But why was the war fought? And where did the victors go?
‘I have been thinking about this ever since the first two ships were called to Mangala. The young man who found them was, like you, infected with an eidolon. What was its motive? Was it a lucky accident that its needs coincided with ours, or was it something deeper? My !Cha friend, who so loves stories, dismisses such conspiracy theories. Not because they are not true, I think, but because they do not suit his purpose. But we understand so little about the aliens who have reshaped our history, so conspiracy theories are mostly all we have.’
Ada Morange paused. Flecks of coloured light moved over her face. Her machines hummed and clicked. Unlikely Worlds stood silent and still.
Lisa said, ‘That sounds like something Adam Nevers would say.’
‘You think that the two of us are similar? That we have some kind of relationship?’
Ada Morange did not smile, but she sounded amused.
‘He seems to think that you do,’ Lisa said.
‘After Mangala, after he lost his job with the Metropolitan Police in London and joined the UN Technology Control Unit, he tried to find something he could use against me. He did not succeed, of course, and that was the end of it, until your little local difficulty. So there is no relationship, except perhaps in his head. And besides, we are very different, he and I. He wants to limit use of Elder Culture technology because he fears it. I want to embrace it. To understand it. Only by understanding what we use can we truly master it, and truly control our destiny.’
‘You want to secure the future.’
‘If you are travelling somewhere, you want to make sure that you know as much about your destination as possible. Tell me, do you have any idea at all why you are drawn to what you call your lodestar?’
‘Not a one.’
‘The eidolon that inhabits you, it does not speak to you?’
‘Not that I can tell.’
‘Not even in dreams?’
‘If it does, I don’t remember them.’
Unlikely Worlds spoke up, startling Lisa. ‘There are the diagrams, of course. The diagrams you have been drawing.’
‘It would be nice to think that it is trying to be helpful,’ Ada Morange said. ‘That it is trying to point us towards something we can use. But perhaps we are too hopeful. Too trusting.’
‘Some might say too arrogant,’ Unlikely Worlds said.
‘Because, despite all evidence to the contrary, we continue to believe that the universe is shaped for our convenience? No. We believe instead that we might just be clever enough to win some advantage over those who try to manipulate us,’ Ada Morange said, and looked at Lisa again. ‘I believe that Professor Lu Jeu told you about my research into the Ghajar pulsar map. The first one.’
Lisa said, ‘All things considered, I guess you’d be surprised if we hadn’t talked about it.’
‘What he does not know, what no outsider knows, is that we decoded the map two years ago. We found where it points to.’
One of Ada Morange’s screens swivelled to face Lisa. It showed a cluster of blocky pixels on a field of black.
‘That is the star in question,’ Ada Morange said. ‘An M0 red dwarf. The map you pulled from the narrative code and your odd little talent confirm it. Why it was of such interest to the Ghajar we do not yet know. As far as we can tell, it possesses only two planets. Both are smaller than Mars, and both orbit so close to it that their surfaces are most likely oceans of molten rock. And as far as we know, it is not linked to the wormhole network.’
Lisa said, ‘Wait. You’ve been there?’
‘No. Not yet. The problem, you see, is not that we do not know where it is. The problem is deciding whether or not we should attempt to reach it.’
The cluster of pixels shrank to a point. Other points drifted in from two edges of the screen. Lisa realised that the viewpoint had pulled back to show the star’s relationship to its neighbours.
‘Stars in the immediate neighbourhood are widely scattered,’ Ada Morange said. ‘Nevertheless, one is orbited by wormholes: an F8 star somewhat larger and brighter than Earth’s Sun, located a hundred and sixteen light years from your lodestar.’
On the screen, one of the points was suddenly circled by a blue ring.
‘It is not a long trip, between Terminus and this F8 star,’ Ada Morange said. Sparks of screen-light shone in her eyes. ‘I have sent several expeditions out there, to observe the lodestar. At the moment we can go no closer. If we cannot find a wormhole that leads to it, the only way to reach it would be to travel there directly, across more than a hundred light years. But it is clear that your eidolon has a connection with it, which is why I want you to go out there. To the F8 star. If nothing else, we can make use of your compass talent to absolutely confirm that this little M0 dwarf really is the target of the pulsar maps. And perhaps, when your eidolon is closer, it will tell us something more. Unlikely Worlds believes that this is a foolish hope, but it is one that should be tested. Well, what do you say?’
46. The Message
‘My ship’s bridle said that Ada Morange told her that I was on Veles,’ Tony said. ‘That part I can believe. As Aunty Jael, Ada Morange was in constant contact with the wizards on the slime planet. She must have taken the q-phone link with her when she escaped. But the bridle also said that she applied for permission from Dry Salvages’s traffic control to boot, and flew here under her own volition. I think that she thinks she is telling the truth, but what she claims to have done is frankly impossible. She is not programmed for autonomous behaviour. There are strict protocols to prevent her or the ship from acting independently. She should not have come here unless I told her to.’
‘Yet here she is,’ Unlikely Worlds said.
‘Probably because Ada Morange hacked her,’ Tony said, thinking again of that phantom spider-squid extending its tentacles from world to world. ‘She used the q-phone link to take control, and gave the bridle false memories of acting independently. And that is not all she did.’
‘She told your ship where to find her,’ Unlikely Worlds said.
‘Is that a guess, or did you have something to do with it?’
‘If I knew where Ada was, I would be there, not here,’ Unlikely Worlds said. ‘And it was not exactly a guess. More in the nature of a logical deduction. You told me that she was interested in the eidolon lodged in your head. She helped you to escape Raqle Thornhilde’s sons, and now she has made the obvious next move, and extended an invitation.’
They were in an open-air café at the edge of the tomb-raider settlement’s main street. Tony, ravenously hungry, was forking up a mess of red beans and rice; Victor Ursu was sipping a frothy milkshake; Unlikely Worlds squatted at the little round table with a shot glass of whisky set on the flat top of his tank, absorbing the organic molecules that flavoured the drink via a quantum mechanism that massively inflated the probability that they would be located inside the tank rather than in the glass. Or so he said.
Victor thumbed foam from his upper lip. ‘It could be a trick meant to send you on the wrong path, lad.’
‘I wondered about that too,’ Tony said.
‘Where is it, this place where she is supposed to be waiting for you?’ Unlikely Worlds said.
Tony opened the window that the bridle h
ad sent to him. ‘I have full details of the route and the flight plan, but it passes through several mirrors that are not on any maps.’
‘Perhaps it is the destination of that ship Ada Morange dispatched a century ago,’ Unlikely Worlds said.
‘I don’t think so. If that had mirrors orbiting it, there would have been no need to travel there the hard way.’
‘Sometimes you cannot tell if mirrors are present around a star until you go there,’ Unlikely Worlds said. ‘And your maps of the wormhole network are woefully incomplete, even now.’
‘There’s only one way to know the shape of something in the dark,’ Victor said. ‘You have to lay your hand on it. As I think the lad already knows.’
‘I cannot trust the invitation, and I cannot trust my ship,’ Tony said. ‘But I have no other path to follow. How long will it take to reach the surface from here?’
‘Less than an hour to walk to the railhead,’ Victor said. ‘Then just twenty minutes by train.’
‘There’s a railway?’
‘It was built to carry out spoil when a company of tomb raiders excavated a necropolis close by.’
Tony got the coordinates of the railway’s surface terminal and calculated orbits and descent paths while he followed Victor Ursu and Unlikely Worlds to the railhead, and told Abalunam’s Pride’s bridle when and where to rendezvous. He was monitoring her radar feed and listening to chatter from traffic control. Raqle Thornhilde must know by now that his ship had booted from Dry Salvages, must have guessed where it would be heading. Her two sons would be watching it, waiting for Tony to show himself. Waiting to pounce.
At the railhead, Victor told Tony that his responsibility for him ended here. ‘I went out onto the skin once, when I was part of a delegation that met with politicians in Tanrog. I am not in a hurry to repeat the experience. I hope that your path is a true one, and you will come back and walk with me again, and tell me how your story ended.’
