The Water Bear

by Groucho Jones

  “How far is it?”

  “To my home? It’s simply a matter of wakening. It might take two days, or two minutes. The path will unfold before us. The people will be excited to meet you.”

  “How far to ours?”

  “Four hundred kilometers Spinwards.”

  “The train will take us there?”

  “I’ll take you.”

  Iris was right. One moment they were in an occult forest, and then they were descending a regular forested trail. The difference in her sensations was palpable. She felt as though she’d literally woken from a dream. She looked behind, and there was only a snow-covered mountain. Below them were welcoming lights, and below those, lights in a valley. A rosy-fingered dawn was reaching into the sky. It reminded Box of Atwusk’niges.

  Kitou saw it too. She held Box tight, and pointed.

  “It’s like home,” she said.

  “It is home,” said Iris.

  15 ∞ Hot Pursuit

  2065

  A symphony; a wheel; a long, slow dance of gravity; pure game theory; a moment of annihilation - war in space was all that. The first the Water Bear knew of an attack was when the Flux was destroyed. First the Horu ship was there, then a cone of ionized gas was expanding in the direction of travel of the weapon. It was only an accident of timing – a glitch in the synchronization of fast-moving objects - that saved the Bat and the Water Bear from a similar fate.

  These were apex physics weapons: lumps of degenerate metal, accelerated to near-lightspeed, delivered through a spacetime anomaly. What human strategists feared most was ordinary matter, travelling at relativistic speed, manifesting millimeters from a target. Who could defend against that?

  Flux might’ve seen it coming, but couldn’t avoid it.

  Undodgeable bullets.

  For the Water Bear, it was a near miss. Her consciousness was a community of individuals. One was her gamespace monitor, a patient software agent that watched the world in Planck time. His role was to protect the ship from surprises, and he reacted instantly. Jaasper Huw was asleep in his cocoon. Pax was a meter from an interior wall. The limits of their meaty vulnerabilities defined the frame he accelerated through, while simultaneously engaging a warp drive.

  All he needed was time for energy to suffuse its manifolds.

  A few milliseconds.

  The Water Bear’s acceleration in a straight line was like falling, because gravity attracts everything equally, but at these levels, tidal forces pressed Jaasper into his bed, pooling the blood in the side of his head, pushing him into unconsciousness. Three seconds more would’ve killed him. Pax was driven through a crumple zone, but he was trained for it. A lifetime of martial arts had benefits other than fighting. With the start of a cry, he passed out too.

  It was during this long gulf of relativistic slomo that the ship herself became aware of events, her primary receiving information from a cloud of subroutines and contributory brains. She was a Po warship, on the cutting edge of human capability, and this was her element. Still, she was lucky. She might’ve been first, or the weapon with her name might’ve come sooner.

  Satisfied with how her monitor was handling defense, she began to wargame her responses.

  A millisecond later, she entered warp space.

  A pellet of depleted uranium, intended to destroy her, grazed her departing warp bubble. The Bat wasn’t as lucky, and was left tumbling in a spiraling cloud of glitter.

  His parting words were, good hunting.

  Pax snapped awake in the Water Bear’s gamespace, followed by Jaasper.

  [Situation?] he asked.

  [In hot pursuit,] said the Water Bear.

  She replayed the annihilation of Flux, and the near destruction of the Bat. Viewports showed their quarry: a Horu ship, unfolding space before the attack, opening like a hand, with fingertips touching its targets. Through those binary digits, the weapons had come.

  Elegant, thought Pax. And flamboyant. The gesture was intended to be menacing, like the hand of a demon, reaching in through a hole in the ether.

  The hand-shaped ship was remarkably large. The Bat and Water Bear were hundreds of kilometers apart; Flux was a thousand kilometers away. They could’ve been further apart, but then it wouldn’t’ve been a trap.

  A trap the Horu had sprung easily.

  The Bat was fading fast, said the head-up displays: powering down for the long wait. Flux was gone, forever.

  Pax closed his eyes.

  [Vitals?]

  [You and Jaasper both have operable brain injuries.]

  [Repair us,] he said.

  [Starting neurosurgery... now.]

  [They took their best shot,] said Jaasper.

  [They did,] said Pax. [And it was better than we expected. Now we make them pay.]

  The Water Bear had learnt several things on this mission. Macro’s time-traveling device had given her an insight into the problem of transwarp communications. No more would her warp bubbles be pristine islands of silence. Now, at warp speed, she could see the Horu system in forensic detail: Horax, the roiling black planet; clouds of gas and debris from her fallen companions; the enemy, its hand closing.

  If her warp jumps before had been like falling, this was like flying.

  She also possessed the first secrets of the Horu geometry drive. It relied on entering curled-up spatial dimensions. She couldn’t conjure up a Manifold yet, but she could follow another ship through one. Now she would follow this hand, wherever it took them.

  That was the point of the trap. To gather information. It was what the Water Bear and Bat were made for.

  She postponed her regrets, for the death of Flux and his cargo of souls, which was a loss beyond reckoning. She’d assumed the necropolis would be able to defend itself. Flux had thought so too. What changed? What new technology had the Horu attacker revealed, and where had it come from?

  She thought about her own crew instead. Pax was alive. She didn’t know how she’d get by without her Navigator. Jaasper Huw was a find: a streetfighter, delivered by the universe to where he was most needed. She sensed his worldspirit, a fierce presence at the edges of her sensorium. She sent her love to her away team, and to Ito, wherever in the cosmos they were fighting.

  And Alois Buss, the bravest of all. Where was he now? She could’ve reached out, but chose not to.

  She didn’t need to know. All her people were competent. More than competent. Exceptional.

  They were her A-team.

  The hand-shaped ship refolded itself.

  She drove at warp speed into the stillpoint of its disappearance.

  16 ∞ Respit’s Brain

  314

  She rose, her eyes adjusting to the light. The pearly semidarkness of the Möbius night was squeezing past the edges of the drapes. A handful of photons. Sufficient.

  Dr Box and Kitou’s beds were empty.

  Unusual.

  But not alarming.

  Quiet as a cat in search of her supper, she flowed through the Chancery halls. A few insomniacs were about. She avoided them. There was a clatter from the kitchens, and she smelt the malty aroma of the day’s first batch of bread. She was instantly hungry, but that could come later.

  Marius had slipped away an hour before, with the touch of his lips still on her breasts. He’d been good, in bed, for a man. Better than good. The Blue had the opposite of the Po attitude to intrateam fucking; they believed it bound them together. Brin was ambivalent. She was happy to not sleep with her Po teammates, even if she sometimes wanted to do just that. Sleeping with the amorous Blue came naturally.

  The saturnine Horu weren’t to her taste, although she’d had some pleasure there too.

  Today she was Marius’s.

  Outside, two pale faces waited, bobbing in the shadows. They’d dressed all in black, as they’d been asked to. They began to rub dirt into their faces, but she stopped them. She showed them a gesture for talking. They nodded, and led her away from the house.

  They weren’t much
to look at, these two children, but the ship assured her they were talented. The girl was called Nim. She was a psi. The hulking youth was a delver, who could find his way through the world’s interstices, and was also reputedly good with his fists. He was called Respit. They were Kitou’s age or younger. That was fine. Brin had no use for soldiers. This place was awash with boneheaded sword wielders.

  She wanted experts.

  They made their way through the complex of hedgerows, yards and fortifications that made up the Chancery yards. Brin stopped them partway, and showed them how to flow through the night. Deft, catlike movements. Like water, she motioned. They understood perfectly. Soon they were nearly as stealthy as she was. She was impressed. Then they were beside a creek, far from the house, in the entrance of a cave, and then inside it, where Respit rubbed Cerulean wax on a rockface to make a faint glow.

  The cave seemed to stretch endlessly, in every direction.

  “Are we out of earshot?” she asked.

  “Can’t hear in here,” said Respit.

  “What Respit means,” said Nim, “is this cave isn’t part of the real world.”

  Brin nodded. This was exactly the strangeness she’d asked for.

  She was here to take the fight to the Enemy.

  Respit and Nim were members of the Horu shamanic class. They believed their abilities descended from the Unanimated, the Horu dead that never made it into this place, and Brin had no reason to doubt it. She knew from the Water Bear’s mission profile that they were both highly intelligent, and suffered in varying degrees from autism-spectrum neurodevelopmental disorders. The Horu considered these traits to be valuable, so these two young savants bore no hint of any stigma.

  Brin motioned them together.

  “I won’t try to mislead you with trite stories or fabulism,” she said. “My ship says you’re at least as intelligent as I am.”

  Taking a chalk she’d brought for the purpose; she drew a rudimentary panther.

  “Excuse my drawing skills. What’s that?”

  “Panthera,” said Nim.

  “What does it mean? Respit?”

  The big youth colored in the dim light.

  “Means you?”

  “Right. Now, draw me two more.”

  She handed the chalk to Nim, who started to draw. Brin stopped her.

  “No, not cubs. Full-sized animals. I’m the panther; you’re my personal army. Now draw.”

  Nim drew a sinuous creature, prowling beneath a moon and stars the girl had never seen. It captured the gist of the girl in just a few strokes: a vulpine intelligence, and a sly wit. It was far better than Brin’s rude sketch. Respit’s was childish: a sticklike cat with fangs and flattened-back ears.

  Brin waited until both had been drawn.

  “Why are we doing this?”

  “Symbols,” said Nim.

  “That’s right. Symbols have power. The Blue people may have sung this place into existence, but it’s your story.”

  In her straightforward way, that left no room for lying or exaggeration, she told them the story of their people. Maybe they’d heard it before. It didn’t matter. She wanted them to know that she knew it, and respected it.

  “You’re the oldest human civilization,” she said. “You may not be great warriors, but you’re subtle, and clever. If you’ll be my followers, then my powers are yours to command.

  “I’m a ferocious warrior. Trust me on that.

  “In return, you become mine.

  “By believing it, we make it so.”

  [Brin, this is excellent work,] said the Ship.

  “Now we draw blood.”

  [What?]

  She lifted her sword, and cut her arm, and drained her blood onto the wall.

  “Now you,” she said. With two gasps of pain, they mixed their blood in with Brin’s.

  “Listen,” she said. “I’m not only the embodiment of your panther myth. I’m a soldier of the hand of the Po, the most feared black ops regiment in human history. Think about that.

  “I’m here on a mission.

  “A mission to save everything.

  “You know the story. You’ve seen it in my mind. No doubt you’ve heard it discussed. You know I have nothing to hide.

  “I’m deputizing you. Do you understand?”

  “Like the worldsinging,” said Respit, “but ours.”

  “Remember,” she said. “This is all in our minds.”

  She wiped a hand through the blood, and smeared it on her face. They did the same.

  “Very good. Now you’re Po specialists. You fight for a just society. You work for me. Ship, you had something to say?”

  [Not me.]

  “Good. Then let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  They were inside a backdoor, Nim said. Some were intended. Some were mistakes. Respit knew how to exploit them. Through his eyes, Brin saw the code. What struck her most was its elegance. The Möbius machine was a massively parallel, quantum computer. Unlike the Real, whose nature was stored in particles whose quantum wavefunction had collapsed into one state, the qubits that made up Möbius space were in all possible states, in a permanent state of quantum superposition.

  A model of a tree could never be a tree, except in this place.

  How to bootstrap a universe.

  The corridor branched, and branched again; the walls took on a fibrous appearance. The structures reminded her of brain cells. Soon she was sure they were neurons. She cursed her imagination.

  “Respit’s brain,” said Nim.

  “What?”

  “A model,” said Nim. “He models this place on his brain. Don’t let it get to you.”

  “Get to me, how?”

  “It can get a bit hallucinatory.”

  Her mission began the previous night, with a fight. Marius said something she disliked, so she put him in an armbar, until he revised his opinions.

  “Brin,” he said, with difficulty. “What witchcraft is this? Release me.” It hurt; he couldn’t quite breathe, and every part of her was out of reach of any useful appendage.

  “Brin, please,” he insisted.

  [Yes,] said the ship. [Brin, please think about this.]

  [You take this nonsense seriously?]

  [I share his concerns.]

  Brin waited a while, then using the energy stored in his twisted upper torso, she spun back out of his reach.

  “The Fibonacci art,” he complained, rubbing his shoulder.

  “The Lo style,” she said, and left it at that.

  The fight had been followed by sex. It was inevitable. Brin preferred women, but like most soldiers, she took her pleasure where she could find it. The sex was athletic. More than athletic. Ecstatic. At one point she considered reapplying the arm bar, which would be even more pleasing, naked and slathered with fluids.

  After he’d recovered his breath, she said, “So you think Ito’s been turned?”

  “Not turned,” he said. “Infected.”

  “By what?”

  “By the Numbers.”

  [By the Thespian disease,] said the ship.

  [Why are you even here?]

  [I’ve returned,] said the ship, primly.

  Marius told her that Ito was infected with a disease. It was a degenerative state, brought on by exposure to the Enemy. Brin’s mind churned with all the implications.

  A First, crippled by malware.

  “Okay,” she said, after Marius had made his case. “What are we going to do about it?”

  Now she was inside Respit’s brain, trying to get to the truth of the matter. Her and the ship, and her new followers. The deeper they delved, the more bizarrely symbolic the neural cave system became.

  Flashes of thought.

  Squeezes like brain structures.

  Forests of pseudounipolar cells, with their multiple axons, snaking into a looming middle-distance, and the nightmarish fried egg nuclei of soma. Strange, hypnogogic sounds: crashes and snaps of conversation. A writhing, winding corridor of her
bad dreams, like being trepanned by a snake.

  She got rid of that idea.

  “This place is affecting me,” she said.

  “Breathe,” said Nim.

  “Airways,” said Respit.

  [Yes,] said the ship. [This place is equivalent to the Blue riders’ airwaves. Think about those instead.]

  She did, and her mind was a cool breeze, blowing through high places.

  She breathed.

  Then she was hallucinating. She was flying. No, not flying: clinging to a rocky summit. The wind howled around her. It was no part of this universe. A frozen landscape, far below. Hedgerows rimed with frost. Bodies. A crow rose from a corpse, and cawed into the distance.

  Her corpse.

  She felt Nim pull her into the moment.

  She breathed.

  The neural corridor had become like a corridor again. Her new companions were beside her.

  [Fascinating,] said the ship. [We’re traversing the laminar flows, like the Blue people do.]

  “Explain.”

  [Like stepping into an adjacent universe.]

  “Between,” said Nim.

  “The in-between,” said Respit.

  [I believe they mean we’re in the process of jumping between points, like a hyperluminal drive does, but they lack the math to express it.]

  “Like a wormhole?” asked Brin.

  “What’s a wormhole?” asked Respit.

  She explained the physics of wormholes. It was like a light went on in the boy’s face.

  “Those physics exist?” asked Nim.

  “Absolutely.”

  “I want to go there.”

  “Ship can make wormholes.”

  “Is this true?”

  [Yes,] said the ship. [In several different ways.]

  “You must be like a god.”

  [I like to think so.]

  They reached a destination.

  The Room was a room, and they were its walls.

  They were also in the room. It was uncanny, like synesthesia: her sensorium trying to make sense of their superimposed states. The walls were crumbling masonry, under an industrial sky, the color of infection, a scabrous yellowish gray.