Eon

by Greg Bear

  “Agreed,” Farley said.

  “Garry—” Carrolson began, regarding him intently.

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” She descended the ladder and returned to the cockpit.

  “Jesus, I’m embarrassed,” Lanier muttered.

  “Why, because you’re human?” Farley asked.

  “I have responsibilities,’ he said.

  “There isn’t a person on the Stone who doesn’t,” she said. “And there was an awful lot of hamky-pamky going on while I—“

  Despite himself, he chuckled. ”That’s ‘hanky-panky.”

  “Whatever. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice?”

  He shook his head. “No, I honestly didn’t. The boss is the last to know.”

  “Only if the boss has his eyes shut. I doubt Hoffman is letting such things escape her.”

  “All right, so I’m a ... I don’t know. I’m not a prude, but I’m maybe a bit innocent.”

  “Not innocent at all,” Farley said, reaching across to touch his arm. “And don’t worry. You’re still the boss.”

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Vielgorsky had difficulty keeping his calm. He sweated profusely and smelled bad. His voice was hoarse. Mirsky almost felt sorry for him.

  The black entrance way to the third chamber library opened impressively, and Pogodin and Pritikin urged the captive through with a few well-placed jabs of their AKVs. Mirsky followed at a more leisurely pace.

  “This is where you’ve been wasting your time,” Vielgorsky cried over his shoulder.

  “You’ve never been here?” Mirsky asked, pretending surprise. ”At the very least I would have thought you’d be curious.”

  “It’s useless,” Vielgorsky said. ”It’s filled with American propaganda. Why waste my time?”

  Mirsky laughed out loud, more in anger than humor. ”You poor son of a bitch,” he said. ”The people who built this starship were no more American than you or I.” They halted before the ranks of chairs and chromium teardrops.

  “If you kill me, Belozersky and Yazykov are fully capable of carrying on,” Vielgorsky said.

  “I’m not going to kill you,” Mirsky said. ”We need each other. I want you to sit down.”

  Vielgorsky stood his ground, shivering like a cold dog.

  “The chairs won’t eat you,” Pogodin said, prodding him again.

  “You cannot brainwash me,” Vielgorsky blustered.

  “No, but maybe I can educate you. Sit.”

  Vielgorsky slowly lowered himself into the nearest chair, facing the teardrop apprehensively. ”You will force me to read books? That will be very silly.”

  Mirsky came around behind the chair and reached over to flip the control cover. ”Would you like to learn how to speak English, French, German?”

  Vielgorsky didn’t answer.

  “No? Then perhaps you’d like to learn a little about history. Not from an American point of view from the viewpoint of our descendants. The Russians who survived the Death.”

  “I don’t care,” Vielgorsky said, his pale moist face almost all nose in the teardrop reflection.

  “This is what the Americans were hiding from us,” Mirsky said. “Isn’t it your duty to inspect the treasure we were fighting for? Your superiors cannot. They are dead, or soon will be. The entire Earth will be covered with smoke for years to come. Millions will starve to death or freeze. By the end of this decade, there will be less than ten million of our countrymen left alive.”

  “You’re talking nonsense,” Vielgorsky said, wiping his face with his sleeve.

  “Our descendants built this starship,” Mirsky said. ”That’s not propaganda, it sounds like fantasy, but it’s truth, Vielgorsky, and all our squabbling with each other cannot conceal the truth. We trained and came here and fought and died to find the truth. You would be a traitor to turn away from it.”

  “Are you proposing we share power?” Vielgorsky asked, glancing up at him. Mirsky swore under his breath and turned on the machine.

  “It will speak to you in Russian,” he said. ”It will answer your questions and it will teach you how to use it. Now ask.”

  Vielgorsky stared at the floating library symbol, eyes wide.

  “Ask.”

  “Where do you want me to start?”

  “Start with our past. What they taught us in school.”

  The symbol changed to a question mark.

  “Teach me about ...” Vielgorsky looked up at Mirsky.

  “Go on. It isn’t painful. But it is addictive.”

  “Teach me about Nicholas I.”

  “That’s pretty safe,” Mirsky said. ”Too far back. Ask it to teach you about the grand strategic plan of the Soviet Army from 1960 to 2005.” Mirsky smiled. ”Weren’t you ever curious?”

  “Teach me ... about that, then,” Vielgorsky said.

  The library silently searched and organized its presentation, numerous colorful utility symbols flickering around Vielgorsky’s field of view.

  It began.

  After a half hour, Mirsy turned to Pogodin and Pritikin and told them to go back to the fourth chamber. He nodded at the entranced Vielgorsky. ”He’ll be no trouble. I’ll watch him.”

  “When will we get our chance?” Pritikin asked.

  “Anytime you’re free, Comrade,” Mirsky said. ”It’s open to all.”

  Belozersky jerked the muscular Pletnev up from his chair and swung him around with surprising strength. ”I know fantasies when I hear them,” he growled.

  “It’s easily proven,” Pletnev said, his head turned to one side to avoid Belozersky’s fist on his collar. ”We must go there—comrades Pritikin and Sinoviev have told us as much as they know. The seventh chamber does not stop. It goes on forever.”

  Belozersky let him go and backed away slowly, fists clenched.

  “Deviationist crap. Pritikin and Sinoviev are intellectuals. Why should I believe them?”

  Yazykov motioned for the three soldiers to take Pletnev by the arms.

  “You sold us into defeat for your own miserable skin,” he said. “It was your duty to die out there, not come sniveling to the Americans.”

  “It was finished,” Pletnev said. ”We had no other choice.”

  “This rock can be ours!” Yazykov shouted. ”Now, where is Mirsky?”

  “I’ve told you. He’s in the fourth chamber.”

  “Shit. He’s in his beloved library,” Belozersky said.

  “Then that’s where we’ll arrest him,” Yazykov said. ”Now we should find Garabedian and Annenkovsky—they’re Mirsky’s men as well. Comrade Pletnev, I will personally execute you against the far wall of the seventh chamber. I will spread your blood and counterrevolutionary brains on solid proof of your gullibility.” He threw his hands up in the air in disgust. “Keep him here until we find the others.”

  Rimskaya walked across the compound with the message from Belozersky in his hand. He climbed the steps to what had once been Lanier’s office, and was now Hoffman’s, and knocked on the door. Beryl Wallace answered.

  “Message from the Soviets,” he said tersely. His face was pale and he looked as if he hadn’t slept in days.

  “Something important?” Beryl asked.

  “Beryl, don’t play the protective underling with me. Where is Judith?”

  “She’s downstairs in conference with the medical supervisor. I’m not being officious, Joseph, but she’s very busy.”

  “Yes, well, the Soviets are busy being Soviets, and I think there’s going to be trouble.” He wiped his eyes and blinked owlishly.

  “I’ll get her. She’ll meet you downstairs by the secretary’s desk.”

  Rimskaya grunted and clumped back down the stairs.

  Hoffman emerged from the executive conference room and took the slate from Rimskaya’s hand, reading it over quickly.

  She also looked exhausted, though less so than Rimskaya. Her eyes were rimmed with purple and her cheeks were puffy from lack of sleep.

&nbs
p; “What is Belozersky ... position, rank?”

  “A Zampolit—political officer,” Rimskaya said. His hands were shaking. ”Major. I’ve talked with him once or twice.”

  “What did you think of him?”

  Rimskaya shook his head grimly. ”Hard-liner, ignorant and unimaginative. These other two, Yazykov and Vielgorsky, they worry me. They’re smarter, more dangerous. If they say they’ve deposed Mirsky and we have to deal with them directly, they’ve probably done it.”

  “Then arrange a meeting. We can’t just stop talking because of their internal squabbles. And find out from—what’s his name?—Sinoviev or Pritikin. Find out from one or the other what’s going on and how this affects the Russian civilians.”

  “They aren’t around. They may be in detention or dead.”

  “You think it’s gone that far?” Hoffman asked.

  “They’re acting very Russian,” Rimskaya said, spreading his hands.

  “I’ll be in this conference for another hour or so. Get them to meet with us in an hour and a half.”

  “Better to let them suggest the time, and then make them wait a while,” Rimskaya suggested.

  “You take care of it.”

  She watched the tall, dour mathematician walk out the door and then stared at a blank space on the wall over arm’s empty desk. The secretary was in the cafeteria on lunch break.

  “Just thirty seconds,” Hoffman said, focusing on nothing.

  She stood alone, breathing steadily, one finger tapping lightly on the corner of the desk, beating time to some internal meditative clock.

  When half a minute had passed, she closed her eyes tightly, opened them wide, took a deep breath and turned back to the hallway and the conference room door.

  Chapter Forty

  The tuberider slid slowly past the second wall. On the opposite side, beginning about a kilometer from the wall and paralleling it around the circumference of the corridor, a series of dark brick-colored structures squatted on the bare bronze floor. Each sat on a square base about two hundred meters on a side, rising in a series of steps, each step-level twisted slightly, creating a rounded, half-spiral pyramid.

  “Bingo,” Heineman said, pointing down the throat of the corridor. The floor was alive with moving lights channeled into lanes, the lanes piled many layers deep like a super-dense freeway system. ”We are not alone.”

  “How far have we come?” Carrolson asked.

  “Seven hundred and seventy thousand kilometers, give or take two,” Heineman said. ”Garry, could you pilot for a bit? I’m going to run more tests.”

  “We’ll just keep moving ahead slow, ninety or a hundred kilometers an hour,” Lanier said.

  “That’s about right. I don’t feel very easy about meeting the inhabitants, whatever they may be,” Heineman said, shaking his head as he climbed out of the seat. They were weightless again, moving at a steady velocity.

  “Why would we worry, I mean, besides the obvious reasons?” Farley asked.

  “The obvious reason would be bad enough, but frankly, I’m not happy about coming along the singularity. It’s just occurred to me whoever’s down there might not like people traveling this way. Maybe here are other vehicles—authorized vehicles. Maybe there’s something else. Whatever, if we were to come zipping along at eight or nine klicks a second, anything we hit would be in serious trouble. That’s enough to get us a moving violation, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Lanier said, settling into the pilot’s seat.

  “Yes, well, now that your head is more clear ...”

  Heineman glanced at him sternly and then patted him on the shoulder.

  “Girls, let’s find out what all the fuss is.”

  They replaced various instruments in ports along the floor of the aircraft and installed new sensors in ports so far unoccupied.

  Lanier stared overhead at the corridor floor, fascinated by the procession of lights. Even with binoculars, he couldn’t make the lights resolve into anything but bright spots, contrasting against the black of the lanes.

  Something large and gray covered his field of view in the binoculars and he pulled them down. A disk at least half a kilometer wide floated slowly above the lanes, moving south.

  Another disk followed a similar course twenty or thirty degrees to the west.

  “Absolutely no coherent radio signals,” Heineman said. “Waste microwaves and heat and a little X- and gamma-ray activity and that’s it. Radar—the repeater back here shows something substantial about a quarter of a million kilometers ahead—surface area of at least fifteen square kilometers, right on the axis dead center.”

  “I see it,” Lanier said, looking at the primary display. “Objects moving around it, and all along the wall of the corridor.”

  “Don’t ask me what they are,” Heineman said, peering through the windscreen at the gray disks. He squinted in, puzzled anxiety. ”And don’t ask me how long we’re going to stay up here unmolested.”

  “At least we’re small,” Farley said. ”Maybe they won’t notice us.”

  “That big thing up ahead, whatever it is, will notice us,” Heineman said. ”Ten to one it’s riding the singularity, too.”

  Five hundred kilometers past the wall, four large brick-red twisted pyramids rose above the tangle of lanes. From their spacing—equidistant around the circumference, at the quadratic points—Lanier surmised they were built over wells.

  From this distance, they appeared the size of a commemorative postage stamp held at arm’s length—which made them perhaps two kilometers on a side, and a kilometer high. Kilometer-wide clear lanes extended straight north from each structure, for as far as he could see.

  “I think we’re in over our head,” Lanier murmured.

  Farley put her hand on his shoulder and pulled herself into the copilot’s seat. ”We’ve been over our heads for years, haven’t we?”

  “I’d always assumed the corridor was empty—I don’t know why. Perhaps because I couldn’t have imagined this.”

  Heineman floated between them and gripped a bar on the instrument panel to steady himself while he programmed a flight plan. ”We’re going to accelerate to ten thousand klicks an hour, get as close as we can to that big object on the singularity—slowing down on the approach, so they won’t think we’re going to ram them then reverse and hightail for home. That is, of course, if you approve.” He raised an eyebrow in Lanier’s direction.

  Lanier weighed the risks and realized he had no idea what they were.

  “If we reverse now, what can we tell the folks back home?”

  Heineman persisted. ”It’s obvious this place is important. But we have no idea what is it, or what it means to us once we’re back on the Stone.”

  “You’re stating the obvious, Larry,” Lanier said. ”Now tell me whether we’ll survive or not.”

  “I don’t know,” Heineman said. ”But I’m having the time of my life. What about the rest of you?”

  Carrolson laughed. ”You’re crazy,” she told him. ”Crazy jock pilot engineer.”

  Heineman wagged his head back and forth and proudly lifted the breast pockets of his jumpsuit out with his thumbs.

  “Garry?”

  “We have to find out somehow,” he admitted. ”Let’s go, then.”

  Heineman began the sequence on the computer pilot and the tuherider bore down on the singularity, once again putting a sense of direction into the V/STOL cabin.

  When the acceleration stopped and the tuberider coasted at ten thousand kilometers an hour, Heineman distributed supper—sandwiches in foil packets and bulbs of hot tea. They ate in silence, Carrolson and Heineman strapped to the bulkhead behind the cockpit. The corridor’s passage was steady and easily perceptible.

  Another circuit of rectangular structures passed, and several minutes later, yet another wall connected by the four straight clear lanes and the crowded tangled lanes of lights.

  Lanier vacated the seat to Carrolson and took a nap wh
ile Heineman trained the women in the fine points of tuberider control. He dropped in and out of a dream about flying a light plane over jungle and tangled rivers. Somehow, that segued into a track meet. He awoke with the aftertaste of tea in his mouth and undid the seatbelts, pulling himself forward. Farley was adjusting instruments in their ports and replacing memory blocks on the slates collecting and collating the data. She dropped full blocks into a plastic sorting tray and slipped it into a file box. Then she held up one of the auxiliary multi-meters built by engineering before the Death, pointing out the display for Lanier’s inspection.

  “Yes?” he asked, looking down at the flickering numbers.

  “It s kaput,” she said. “Putting out nonsense. So are most of our instruments. We’ll be lucky to interpret half the data we’ve gathered.”

  “Reasons?”

  She shook her head. “Wild guesses, and that’s the best I can do. Other electrical systems seem to be working. It’s probable we’re passing through control fields like those that electively damp inertia on the Stone. These fields damp other effects ... distorted geometry’s effect on activity in the nucleus, changes in slash aitch ... Or the equipment may be crapping out all at once. Warranty expires today—surprise!”

  “The equipment’s fine,” Heineman called out from the copilot’s seat. “Don’t blame my machines.”

  “The man’s so proprietary,” Farley marveled. ”He gumbles everytime I question quality control.”

  “Grumbles, not ‘gumbles’,” Lanier said.

  “Whatever.”

  “Your turn,” Lanier told Heineman, indicating the rear of the plane with his thumb. ”Naptime. We’ll all need to be bright and cheerful.”

  Heineman adjusted the tuberider’s roll and floated past Lanier.

  “Wait,” Carolson said. ”What’s that?”

  The singularity ahead of the tuberider was no longer a shiny cylindrical surface. In intermittent pulses, it glowed orange and then white, like a hot steel wire.