Exultant

by Stephen Baxter

  Over a week of meetings like this, a trick Pirius had learned was to start with positives, and that was what he did now—and they were pretty big positives, too.

  The main elements of the flight training program concerned the use of the new CTC processors for rapid tactical response, precision bombing, and formation flight in the wake of a grav shield. Well, there had been no significant problems with the CTC technology. Likewise the precision flying was going well. The pilots were getting used to the new dynamics of their clumsily modified ships. The starbreaker sighting technique he had come up with, perhaps because it had been figured out by a pilot in the first place, was fitting in easily with their methodology and instincts.

  “The only bad news I can see in these areas,” he said, summing up, “is that it mightn’t be possible to give everybody enough time on the new gear. I’ve requisitioned as much sim time as I can… .” But everybody knew simulations were no substitute for hands-on experience in a real craft. Besides, the technology was being modified so rapidly that the sim designs were quite often a day or two behind the real thing anyhow.

  Pirius Blue stared at him; as always, judgmental, hostile. “And you think that’s a minor problem? That we might fly into combat without everybody even having had time to try out the new gear?”

  “I didn’t say minor,” Red said testily. “It’s something we can minimize. Juggling the schedules, accelerating sim upgrades—”

  They argued on about the training issues for a while. Red let it run, trying to pick out positives, and identifying actions they could take.

  Eventually the talk turned to the gravastar, the center of most of their issues.

  Burden passed Pirius Red a data desk. “I’ve a summary of the stats here,” he said. “To date, the longest formation flight we’ve managed is two hours.” Everybody knew they would need to fly behind the shields for six hours to reach Chandra.

  Blue said, “We just have to go back and keep trying, until we get it right.”

  “But that’s wearing out the crews,” Burden said evenly.

  Enduring Hope raised a hand to speak. “Not only the crews,” he said firmly. “You have to think about the ships as well. Maybe it isn’t obvious to you glamour-boy pilots, but even when you don’t get a catastrophic failure, every time you fly you’re fatiguing the structure and the systems. We are going to have to use at least some of these ships in anger. And if we’ve worn them out even before we’ve done training—”

  “I hear what you say,” Pirius Red said. “What I don’t know is what to do about it.”

  Blue said, “Our problem isn’t our ships, or our people. It’s that damn grav shield. If it stayed stable we could track it for six hours—or ten, or a hundred. But we can’t keep it stable. We can fly our ships, but we can’t fly the shield.”

  “Ah,” said Burden. “And why? Because it’s Ghost technology, not human.”

  Pirius Red took a deep breath. He’d been prepared for this moment. “So,” he said slowly, “we need a Ghost to fly it.”

  In the shocked silence that followed, Torec helped him out. “That is what we did with the prototype, back in Sol system, and for the exact same reasons. A Ghost has to fly Ghost technology.”

  The Ghost, which had been hovering like an immense soap bubble, suddenly drifted half a meter forward. It altered the geometry of the meeting, disturbing everybody.

  Pirius Blue rubbed his nose, a gesture Red always found irritating. He said without emotion, “Are you serious? Are you suggesting that you allow a Silver Ghost to fly on a human combat mission?”

  Red stared him down. “I felt the same, remember.” He had told Blue about his experiences on Pluto, how he had felt when first confronted by a Ghost. “The mission is more important than anything else.” He dared Blue to contradict him.

  Blue looked disgusted.

  Enduring Hope shrugged. “A Ghost in the cockpit? So what? If you’re going to stop smashing up my ships, you can train rats to fly for all I care.”

  Burden’s reaction seemed more complex. “The question is, will our crews fly with a Ghost? We have all been trained from birth to despise their sleek hides.”

  Pirius Red nodded. “I understand, believe me. If we do this, I’ll join the first flight myself. Show the way.”

  “Good,” said Burden. “But also—I have to ask—will a Ghost fly with humans?”

  “It did back in Sol system,” Torec said.

  “But that was a technology proving exercise. This is combat training. We are enemies, remember.”

  Pirius turned to the Silver Ghost. “Ambassador?”

  The Ghost rolled, its subtle change of posture somehow indicating it was listening.

  “You’ve heard what we have to say. Are you willing—”

  “I anticipated the request.” Virtual schematics scrolled through the air in front of it. “I have taken the liberty of preparing a plan. We could be ready to fly tomorrow.”

  That left them all speechless.

  Pirius Blue said coldly, “I wonder whose agenda we are really following.”

  Pirius Red broke up the meeting, trusting his people to figure out the actions required to achieve the new plan.

  After the others had gone, Torec stayed behind. “Pirius—I need to talk to you. About Tili Three.”

  “I saw your log.”

  “She just isn’t going to cut it.” Torec shook her head, as miserable as if this was her own failure. “I don’t think it’s a lack of ability, or courage. And it’s nothing to do with her prosthesis. It’s just that she’s been through too much down on Quin. She’s burned out.”

  This would be the fourth crew member Pirius had lost like this. The attrition rate was worrying, but there was nothing he could do about that; for some, this assignment was simply too tough.

  Torec was upset. “I hate to raise this. I don’t want her hurt.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll sign her off as unfit for duty.” If he didn’t, she could be marked down as “Lacking Moral Fiber”—in the barracks, one of the worst stigmas you could have attached to your character. “Talk to Blue,” he told Torec. “He can break it to her.”

  “Thanks,” she said. She glanced around; seeing the room was empty, she gave him a peck on the cheek. “You’re a good man, Squadron Leader.”

  She hurried out. Pirius stared after her, bemused.

  Pirius Red decided to hotfoot it to the refectory while he had a chance, but Nilis waylaid him.

  Even here on 492, while the squadron got itself together, Nilis was continuing his multifaceted studies of Chandra’s mysteries, but he was still encountering baffling obstructions. “It’s immensely frustrating,” he would say. “After all, the clock is counting down for me too. At this rate we will have destroyed Chandra before we know what it is!”

  To Pirius’s relief, though, he didn’t want to talk about the black hole today.

  “I watched the transcript of your meeting,” the Commissary said. “Abbreviated, of course.”

  Pirius frowned. “Do you think I’m wrong to allow the Ghost to lead us?”

  “I don’t know if you’re right or wrong—and nor do you, until you try it. But it’s certainly a good idea.” Nilis smiled. “You’ve come a long way since Pluto, Pirius. I’m proud of you. You are becoming able to rise above your first reactions, your conditioning. I think it’s called maturity.”

  Well, perhaps. Pirius had thought this over before the meeting, knowing he had to float the possibility. He told himself he had no qualms about using the Ghost: whatever it took to get the job done. Pluto was far away, weeks ago. But even so, it had been odd seeing Burden and Hope trailing a Silver Ghost as it headed out of the room; Blue’s face, a cold mirror of his own, had been like his own conscience. Had he really matured since Pluto? Or was he compromised by contacts with earthworms, as Blue kept telling him?

  Nilis said, “If I may, I’ll ride along with you tomorrow, on this remarkable flight. As a Virtual passenger, I mean,” he added has
tily.

  “Why? Because it’s historic?” Pirius, overstressed, overworked, felt irritated. “To be frank, Commissary, I don’t think many of us are thinking about history right now.”

  Nilis winked. “Ah, but history never stops thinking about you, pilot.”

  For some reason that chilled Pirius. “We might not end up with any crew capable of flying anyhow,” he said bleakly. “We lost another one today.”

  “Tili Three? I know. But you did the right thing, Pirius. You showed compassion.” Nilis smiled, his face crumpling slightly. “I’m no military man, but I believe this is called leadership. I have the feeling that if you keep this up, you’re going to become the kind of stubborn, loyal, dependable, inspirational fool who soldiers have always followed, to glory or their deaths.”

  Hotly embarrassed, Pirius looked away. “I wouldn’t know, sir.”

  “Of course not, of course not.” Nilis stared at Pirius with his big, moist eyes, and his expressive face was creased with concern. “And how are you in yourself?”

  “I’m fine,” Pirius snapped. He gazed back defiantly for a moment, but when Nilis waited for more, he weakened. “I’m doing my best,” he said. “It’s just there is so much to do.”

  Nilis laid his warm, heavy hand on Pirius’s shoulder. “Listen to me. You’re doing all that could be asked of you. If you manage to get your hastily assembled crews of veterans and misfits through such a challenging training program, and all in a few weeks—that in itself will be a massive achievement, regardless of how the mission turns out.” Nilis straightened up. “Remember this, though: you are your own most important resource. Make time for yourself. Lean on Pila more. Make sure you rest properly, eat, all the rest of it. Don’t neglect the biology. I’m relieved you decided to fly yourself tomorrow. Remember, I pushed for you to be squadron leader in the first place because you’re the best pilot I’ve ever encountered. So keep up your own training. And another thing …”

  Pirius, his stomach rumbling, resumed his walk to the refectory. Nilis trailed him, advising, hectoring, arguing, his eyes bright and earnest.

  So the next day Pirius Red found himself free of his desk, at the controls of a greenship, and “flying down the tunnel,” as the crews were starting to call it. Ahead of him was the oscillating, turbulent, eye-watering disc of a grav shield, and around him were walls of distorted spacetime.

  The little constellation of greenship lights was steady. The flight, under Burden’s command—Pirius had been careful to relegate himself to a mere pilot’s role—was going well.

  Right at its heart was the shield-master ship, piloted by Jees. The best pilot in the squadron, in this most difficult of environments, was once again flying steady and true. Pirius had assigned Torec to serve as Jees’s navigator today—but in her engineer’s pod was the massive form of the Silver Ghost, working the grav shield generators.

  Unconventional it was, but it seemed to be working. Even Pirius’s own flight had been smooth, though he had deliberately taken on board two comparative rookies for his own navigator and engineer. Up to now, the flight couldn’t have conformed more to plan if this had been a sim, even though no flight that was a surf along the stitched-up interface between one universe and another, with a Silver Ghost as guest engineer, was ever going to be routine.

  As the record time of two hours flying behind a shield approached, Pirius felt some of the tension seep out of his body.

  Nilis, a Virtual uncomfortably lodged in the cockpit with Pirius, was, after the first hour or so, relaxed enough to dip into the comm loops between the ships. He was particularly intrigued by the conversation between This Burden Must Pass, the notorious Friend of Wigner, and the Silver Ghost in the lead ship. Burden was taking the chance of talking to the Ghost away from its Guardians.

  “And so you believe,” came the Ghost’s simulated voice, “that this universe is essentially transient—all you sense, all you achieve, even your experiences of your inner self will pass away.”

  “Not transient, exactly,” Burden called back. “Just one of an uncountably infinite number of possibilities which will, cumulatively, be resolved at timelike infinity, after the manner of a collapse of quantum functions.”

  “But in that case, what basis for morality can there be?”

  “There is a moral basis for every decision,” said Burden. “To show loyalty to one’s fellows—to put oneself in harm’s way for the sake of one’s species. And while this is only one out of a myriad timelines, we believe that the, umm, the goodness in each timeline will sum at the decision point at timelike infinity to gather into Optimality …”

  “Fascinating,” Nilis said to Pirius. The Commissary whispered, as if he might be overheard. “They are fencing, in a way. Each knows far more about the other’s beliefs than either is prepared to reveal. Fencing, and yet looking for common ground.”

  Pirius Red was light on moral philosophy. “That stuff about putting one’s self in the way of harm for others—that sounded like Doctrine to me.”

  “So it is,” Nilis said. “Much of the Friends’ ‘philosophy’ is actually recycled Druzism—as you’d expect, given the environment it sprang from. Hama Druz seems to have believed that self-interest is the primary driver of any unthinking human action. He said that soldiers are therefore the only moral citizens of any society because only they have demonstrated their selfless morality by putting themselves in harm’s way.” He sniffed. “Of course Druz ignored the plentiful evidence of kinship bonds among the animals and insects—an ant isn’t driven by simple selfishness—and he certainly ignored Coalescences, human hive societies, which were plentiful even in his day. Druz was a good sloganeer, and he obviously was a key figure in human history. But he really wasn’t a very sophisticated thinker—I’ve always found his arguments terribly one-dimensional—haven’t you?”

  Even now Pirius was horrified by such blasphemy, and he deflected the remark. “There’s more than just Druzism in Burden’s beliefs.”

  “Oh, of course. The other element is this basic notion that this universe is an imperfect place that can somehow be fixed. It’s an expression of a feeling of betrayal, you see, a sense that one’s life is irredeemably imperfect and can never be made good. I can quite understand such a creed arising in a society of child soldiers—deliberately kept in miserable conditions as a motivator to fight—whose only escape is either to die young fighting, or grow old in shame. No wonder they want to believe things can be made better. They are quite right!

  “But what’s interesting is that the Silver Ghosts came up with a similar belief. They too were betrayed by the universe, when their sun failed and their world froze over. They elaborated such traumas into a belief that the universe is a hostile place that must be tamed. But they sublimated their feelings of anger, not into the passive acceptance of the Friends, but into programs of exotic physics. They sought ways to change the universe—they tried to make it better!”

  Pirius frowned. “You’re saying that the Friends are a Ghost cult?”

  “Perhaps not as crude as that. But Ghost philosophy is the most interesting element in the whole volatile mix of this new creed.

  “Humans fought Ghosts for long enough, and earlier we worked with them, too. Perhaps humans swapped beliefs with Ghosts. And if that’s so, perhaps the Friends may be the first interstellar religion, the first to fuse the traditions of two species… . The Ultimate Observer could plausibly be a Ghost deity!”

  Pirius frowned. “No human would follow a Ghost.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure, Pilot. People have followed more bizarre beings in the past, though they were mostly imaginary!” He sipped an invisible drink, not reproduced in the Virtual. “One has to wonder, though, if some such encounter as this wasn’t in the mind of that Ghost up there all the time—perhaps we have been given the gravastar technology as a ploy, so that the Ghosts can achieve their own ends, whatever they are. I suppose the great mixing-up that Project Prime Radiant is inflicting on the orderly pools
of the Coalition is a good opportunity for subversion… . I always did intend that we should shake up history, you and I. But one must wonder what great oaks might grow from the seeds we are planting today.”

  Pirius didn’t like the sound of any of that. It sounded too much like the paranoia Nilis had criticized him for before. With a curt command, he shut down unnecessary chatter on the loops; the conversation between Ghost and Friend immediately stopped.

  The little flotilla sailed on, huddling behind its wall of distorted spacetime, with only formal technical communications passing between the ships.

  Chapter 47

  The universe was expanding at half the speed of light. It was small and ferociously dense, still many times as dense as an atomic nucleus.

  At least quarks were stable now. But in this cannonball of a cosmos the matter familiar to humans, composed of protons and neutrons—composites of quarks, stuck together by gluons—could not yet exist. There were certainly no nuclei, no atoms. Instead, space was filled with a soup of quarks, gluons and leptons, light particles like electrons and neutrinos. It was a “quagma,” a magma of quarks, like one immense proton.

  As time wore inexorably away, new forms of life rose in the new conditions.

  The now-stable quarks were able to combine into large assemblies; and as these assemblies complexified and interacted, the usual processes of autocatalysis and feedback began. The black holes were still there to provide structure, but larger clumps of matter also served as a stratum for life’s new adventures, and there was energy for free in the radiation bath that still filled the universe.

  Among the new kinds, ancient strategies revived. There were exploiters and synthesizers. “Plants” fueled their growth with radiant energy—but there were no stars yet, no suns; rather the whole sky glowed. “Animals” evolved to feed off these synthesizers, and learned to hunt each other.