Eon

by Greg Bear

  “They will not be harmed,” Olmy reiterated. ”This is not that kind of struggle.”

  “The Thistledown is being cleared at this moment,” Toiler said, hoping to arouse more defiance. ”Corprep Rosen Gardner is in charge of a campaign to evacuate the asteroid.”

  Olmy nodded as if that were obvious.

  “What will you do with Vasquez and Lanier?” Toiler asked.

  “Please take the others now,” Olmy said. ”They are your responsibility.”

  “This is intolerable. When word gets down the Way, gates will be closed, lanes cleared—”

  “That’s what the Geshels planned anyway, isn’t it? To expedite clearing the Way of Jarls. That’s the decision the conference was about to reach, at the suggestion of the President, or am I wrong?”

  Toiler glanced nervously at the secondary gate opener. ”You are cooperating with this ... secessionist?”

  Yates merely smiled, removed his torque from the tool-kit, and picted a symbol of Earth wrapped in a circular string of DNA.

  Shaking his head, the advocate gestured to the workers, who guided Farley, Carrolson and Heineman toward the waiting craft. Carrolson was livid with anger. ”Are we just going to go along with this?” she cried.

  “I don’t think we have any choice,” Heineman said, his expression long and solemn. ”There goes Patricia’s birthday party. Watch your step, Garry.”

  Farley looked over her shoulder at Lanier, tears flowing down her cheeks. ”Garry?” she called back.

  “You sons of bitches,” Lanier said to Olmy and Toiler. “Patricia was right. We’re nothing but pawns.”

  “Don’t underestimate yourselves,” Toiler said. He returned to the craft with the gate district representatives in his train.

  The diplomatic Frant stayed behind. The craft took flight again, heading toward the gate reception area.

  “My apologies for your distress,” Olmy said. ”Now. We must proceed to one point three ex nine immediately. Things are happening much sooner than expected.”

  Wu Gi Me and Chang i Hsing carried boxes of equipment and papers out of the tent, and with the help of Berenson’s troops, loading them into the back of a truck. A cool breeze descended from the southern cap, stirring the tent fabric. Except for their heavy breathing and footsteps, and occasional guttural exclamations from Berenson, the evacuation was conducted in silence.

  Six metal double-barred crosses hovered three meters above the road, their red spots seeming to watch every move the soldiers and scientists made. Far above, at the center of the plasma tube, something long and black was aligned on the singularity, no more than fifty meters from the opening of the bore hole. Examining it through binoculars, Wu estimated it was 150 meters in length. It had arrived less than ten minutes earlier, prompting Berenson to order the evacuation.

  When the truck was full and the tent empty, the soldiers crawled on top and the Chinese took the remaining two seats in the front.

  Berenson grabbed a handgrip along the roofline and stepped up on the side ladder. The truck jerked forward and swung around to roll up the ramp.

  With the chamber deserted, the crosses bunched into a cubic formation, then flew off to circumnavigate the chamber floor.

  From the vantage of the flawship, twenty-five kilometers above, an assigned ghost of Corprep Rosen Gardner watched the proceedings, relaying everything by direct beam down the Way to the Axis City.

  In the Axis City itself, communications between the three rotating cylinders and Central City had been severed. Axis Nader was completely blocked off from the transport systems.

  And major sections of City Memory—usually active around the clock—were now isolated and quiet. The tide had turned; the radical Geshels had tripped themselves up in their own haste to take advantage of Olmy’s news and the five guests.

  The incarnate Corprep Rosen Gardner had moved to the Nexus Chambers a few hours before, risking the uncertain location in Central city to be at the center of all Axis City activity. He had created four partials to handle the details of the revolt.

  None of his factioners or supporters called it a revolt; for them, it was a necessary maneuver to protect their rights against action by radical Geshels. Whatever it was called, it was hideously complicated.

  Word from the Thistledown was incomplete, but that was the least of Gardner’s worries now.

  His partials were in the three Axis cylinders and in the offices of the Way Commerce Committee at nine ex six. His militant factioners held all strategic transport sites within the Axis City, and along the Way nearby. Through City Memory and deep within the Axis City’s infrastructure, orthodox Naderites and Korzenowski factioners—his people--were consolidating the gains made in the past few hours.

  Sympathetic personalities in City Memory, including his father, oversaw the interdicted communications nets. Everything was proceeding as planned. Yet Corprep Gardner was more unhappy than he had ever been in his two centuries of life. He cared little for the accusations of the Presiding Minister or the President. He had opposed them often enough in the past, and felt the sting of their power, to relish watching them squirm.

  What made him miserable was the knowledge that the action violated all he had stood for in the Nexus, and all he had espoused before his election as Corprep by the New Orthodox Naderite precincts of Axis Nader. He felt peculiarly vulnerable, as if one of his own partials might chastise him for a breach of honor and faith.

  Already, his factioners were preparing to move the city south along the flaw, toward the Thistledown. They would have to remove barriers as they went; that would take time.

  In the center of the empty Nexus Chambers, surrounded by the armillary information rings, he awaited the return of the President and the senators and corpreps now convened on the Jart question. When they attempted to reenter the Axis City, and were denied, what Gardner called the action wouldn’t matter.

  Then the revolt would have truly begun.

  A partial of the President appeared to one side of him and awaited his attention. Gardner took his time. Finally, satisfied that all was going well—and that the partitioning of City Memory had been particularly successful--Gardner allowed the partial to pict.

  “Do you have the support necessary?” the partial asked.

  “My original is on his Way. Director Hulane Ram Seija has already filed court proceedings. Needless to say, you haven’t followed the usual Nexus procedures.”

  “No. Emergencies and opportunities.” His last statement picted a wide range of emotionally charged symbols: the complex Naderite sign for home, consisting of Earth surrounded by a circle of DNA; this symbol engulfed in fire, replaced by a singed animal skull; and the requisite meaning qualifiers.

  Then, more straightforward, “Ser Ram Seija can try his case after secession. In absentia. Besides, we are working now to have him tried for violation of Nexus procedure.”

  “I’ve heard nothing of this,” the partial said, incredulous.

  “You’ve been busy, Ser President.” He regretted the tone of his response; the President had been working hard on the Jart problem, and he did not wish to imply any dereliction of duty; it was enough for his people to have taken advantage of the President’s absence. ”It was a minor infraction, but I am within my rights. As long as there is a court question, all of Ser Ram Seija’s duties are suspended. Senator Prescient Oyu is his replacement in command—she has left a partial here to carry on her duties.”

  The partial of van Hamphuis then picted that he had protested the insurrection and tried to muster the votes necessary to override Corprep Gardner. Gardner already knew this; by legal maneuvering, and with the advice of Senator Prescient Oyu’s partial, he had declared the vote invalid—lacking a quorum of incarnate senators and corpreps, and called by a partial instead of an incarnate.

  The fight was far from over. The incarnate Tees van Hamphuis would be in the vicinity of the Axis City in just a few hours.

  Chapter Sixty

  At the li
mit of the plasma tube in the first through fourth chambers, arrow-shaped craft patrolled back and forth. Other, larger craft flew at will above the valley floors, and the double-barred crosses were everywhere.

  In the fourth chamber zero compound, Hoffman realized that any attempt at defense would be useless. The technology and the force they were up against was insurmountable.

  “There’s no doubt they’re from the corridor7” she asked Berenson in the middle of the compound as they stood by a truck prepared to evacuate them.

  “No doubt,” Berenson said, accent thick with nerves.

  “Then we can hope for the best.”

  “And what would that be?” Polk asked. Her hair was wildly astray; for impeccable Janice Polk, that was a definite sign of frayed nerves.

  “That they’re human. Our descendants.”

  Rather than risk wholesale slaughter, she instructed Gerhardt to tell his soldiers not to fire unless directly assaulted.

  She could not, of course, instruct the Russians—they would have to figure out the situation on their own.

  Wallace and Polk helped with the communications. They spoke with several Russians on the radio, but the Russians refused to provide any information on their situation—though, in all fairness, neither of the women were able to get in touch with an officer. Rimskaya stepped forward and offered to take a message to the Russian leaders, on foot if necessary. That was gallant, but Hoffman refused. By the time the Russians received the message, the situation would probably have changed.

  Three crosses in a triangle formation flew over the compound.

  One broke away at the southern cap and returned to hover directly over the center, and over Hoffman. Bright flashes of light appeared between Berenson and Hoffman.

  Hoffman jerked and stumbled against Rimskaya; Berenson stood his ground with eyes wide and nostrils flared.

  Then the cross spoke, its voice that of a woman.

  “You are not in danger. Under no circumstances will you be harmed. You will also not be allowed to harm each other. All occupied chambers are under Axis City jurisdiction.”

  “So what do we do? Kowtow?” Beryl Wallace asked.

  Gerhardt approached them slowly, one eye cocked toward the hovering cross. ”Jesus, that’s scary,” he said to Hoffman in a whisper. ”My people don’t know whether to piss down their legs or bow in submission.”

  “Sorry I can’t reassure them,” Hoffman said.

  “What in hell is ‘Axis City?’“ Berenson asked.

  “I could hazard a guess,” Hoffman said. ”Where everybody lives down the corridor—on the axis.”

  Rimskaya nodded too eagerly. ”Talk to it, then,” he suggested.

  Hoffman looked up and squinted. ”We intend no harm. Please identify yourself.”

  “Are you the leader of this group?”

  “Yes,” Hoffman said. She pointed to Gerhardt. ”He’s a leader, too.”

  “Are you the leaders of all groups in the chambers?”

  “No,” Hoffman said. She didn’t volunteer any more information, deciding a witness’s approach to questioning would be best.

  Two of the larger blunt-arrowhead craft flew by slowly and took up positions at the north and south ends of the compound, hovering about twenty-five meters above the surface.

  “Do you guarantee the safety of a negotiator?” the voice from the cross asked.

  Hoffman glanced at Gerhardt. ”Make sure,” she said.

  Then, more loudly in the direction of the cross, “Yes. Give us some time.” Gerhardt used his radio to contact the units in all chambers.

  “Are you prepared now?” the voice asked.

  “Yes,” Hoffman said, at a nod from Gerhardt.

  The craft at the southern point dropped gracefully to the ground ten or eleven meters from the center of the compound, lowering a single pylon as it touched down. A hatch in the nose dilated.

  A man in a black suit stepped from the hatch and quickly examined the compound, then focused on Hoffman. He had walnut-colored hair cut in three stripes, with shorter fuzz between, he lacked nostrils and his ears were large and round.

  “My name is Santiago,’ he said as he approached. He held out his hand to Gerhardt, who was closest; Gerhardt took it and shook it once, then backed away. The man approached Hoffman and offered his hand again.

  Hoffman grasped it lightly; the man squeezed no harder than she did.

  “I apologize for your distress, whatever the necessity. I am instructed to tell you that all of your people are now honored guests of the Axis City,” he said. ”I’m afraid you can’t stay in the Thistledown much longer, however.”

  “We don’t have anyplace else to go,” Hoffman said, feeling overpowered, more helpless than she had felt even when leaving Earth on the shuttle.

  “‘You are in my care,” Santiago said. ”We must gather everybody together—your researchers, soldiers, your people in the bore holes, the Russians. And we must do it soon.”

  Mirsky disembarked from the craft and blinked at the bright tubelight.

  The interior of the craft had been quiet and dark, in sharp contrast to the bright glow of the seventh chamber. For the first time, he stared down the length of the corridor and felt as undeniable what he had hitherto only heard described.

  There had been so little time; the library had taken up whatever effort he had spared from being a leader ...

  Five other Russians disembarked behind him. All had been deserters in the woods near the 180 line in the fourth chamber.

  They, too, blinked and covered their eyes. They, too, stared in awe down the corridor, the implications of that vast distance becoming more and more clear.

  A kilometer to the west, hundreds of people gathered near the zero tunnel. They were mostly NATO personnel, Mirsky saw, also being evacuated. The Potato was being cleared, for whatever reason hardly mattered right, now.

  The Russian he had met in the woods touched Mirsky’s arm and pointed east. Hundreds of Russian soldiers squatted in a square, flanked on all sides by at least a dozen crosses and three people he didn’t recognize, dressed much like the woman who had taken him captive.

  More blunt-arrowhead craft descended and landed near the chamber’s southern cap, disgorging more people. Mirsky wondered idly if they were all going to be killed. Did it still matter? Having died once?

  He decided it did.

  He still wished for the stars. Now the possibility of attaining that wish was remote, yet the wish itself informed him he was essentially Pavel Mirsky. He still had a connection with the five-year-old boy who had stared up at the stars over winter-bound Kiev. In fact, that memory was pure, not reconstructed but original; Vielgorsky had not blasted that most basic experience from his head.

  He wondered idly if Vielgorsky and the other political officers were in the crowds of captives. What could they do to him now?

  Nothing.

  Only a Russian, Mirsky thought, could draw a free breath in such a situation as this.

  Senator Prescient Oyu joined them at the resort and informed Yates and Olmy that the Frants were planning to close the gate, standard procedure in any temporary emergency involving the Way.

  Olmy acted quickly. Before the gate could be closed, Yates requested that a small defense flawship be prepared to ferry the secondary gate opener and his guests. The request was denied, but Yates tested his authority on the Frant side of the gate by appropriating one of the two Axis craft left on the reception field.

  The human defense forces there—mostly Naderite homorphs--decided to abide by the letter of the law, and not Toilet’s parting instructions, and gave the secondary gate opener what he asked for, as well a two guards and a mechanical defense worker.

  Taking the craft through the gate and up to the axis, they found three flawships that had been disengaged from the singularity to allow Toilet’s craft passage. One was unoccupied; it had been parked just minutes before and abandoned by its Naderite crew in a near-axis inspection area, tethered to the
flaw by traction fields. Again, following the letter of the law, the crew had retired their small flawship for an inspection after a hundred thousand hours of active duty.

  Yates’s authority easily overrode the flawship’s ambiguous instructions.

  They boarded and restrung the flawship on the singularity.

  The flaw passage through the center of the ship simply extended to the outer bulkheads, reshaping the craft’s nose-in-profile from an O to a U, and then closed around the flaw. They accelerated toward I.3 ex 9.

  “You have a lot of support, don’t you?” Lanier asked Olmy as they watched the Way blur into black and gold.

  “More than I would have gambled on,” Olmy said.

  “Radical Geshels have walked on the edge for decades,” Senator Oyu said. ”They have not been bad leaders, but they haven’t prepared adequately for the fulfillment of their plans. And they have exacted a kind of revenge on the orthodox Naderites by benign neglect. Now you see some of the results.”

  “Are you all orthodox Naderites?” Patricia asked.

  “No,” Olmy said. ”I’ve long since given up that heritage, and Sers Yates and Oyu were raised Geshel.”

  “Then why are you doing this?”

  “Because there is a way for both sides to achieve their goals—if reasonable people intervene,” Senator Oyu said.

  The small flawship was designed for speed and rapid acceleration.

  They averaged some 4,900 kilometers a second, and reached the first defense station at 5 ex 8 within 28 hours.

  The stations were located at three points along the Way from 5 ex 8 to I.3 ex 9. Each was a solid fifty-meter-thick black layer hugging the corridor’s floor for a hundred kilometers, the surface dimpled with weapons emplacements and field generators.

  At all three stations, the crews requested their mission and authority.

  Yates identified himself, and since the station personnel had no orders to prevent craft from moving down the Way, they were allowed to pass.

  A hundred thousand kilometers beyond each station, mechanical flaw defense vehicles cleared the Way for them, then resumed their posts on the singularity, vigilant for Jart flawships or flaw-riding weapons.