The Radiant Seas

by Catherine Asaro

  Kurj became part of his throne. Its exoskeleton inserted prongs into his ankles, wrists, lower spine, and neck. A spiderweb of conduits on his head extended microscopic threads into his scalp. Today he used a virtual reality mode, drifting in space with the battle cruiser Roca’s Pride and its attendant flotilla, hundreds of ships ranging from single-pilot Jag starfighters to Starslammer destroyers. The ships were spread out through a large volume, millions of cubic kilometers.

  A Wasp corvette kept pace with him. He had made his size in the simulation equivalent to his real size, which meant the Wasp dwarfed him. Yet it was one of the flotilla’s smaller craft. Its crew of four rode in its two forward sections, the head and thorax. A stalk separated those sections from a detachable abdomen.

  Antimatter readout, Kurj thought. The VR simulation produced a display of the abdomen’s interior and superimposed it on the Wasp. Luminous red curves highlighted the invisible magnetic fields. They surrounded a Klein containment bottle, essentially a three-dimensional Möbius strip. In normal space, the outer surface of a Klein bottle narrowed into a tube that curved up, looped over the bottle, and joined back into its own body, curving smoothly to form the interior, until it opened out into the mouth, so the inside of the bottle became its outside.

  The Klein bottles used on starships had a quirk: when the bottle looped over itself, it also looped out of normal space, its “interior” taking on both real and imaginary parts. The bottle spread the particles it contained through that space by adding imaginary parts to their mass and charge. Varying the imaginary parts allowed the bottle to hold far more antimatter than it could have in real space. Klein containment bottles cradled antimatter within a twist of reality.

  Most Klein bottles served as fuel tanks. During flight they also collected antimatter from the cosmic ray flux in complex space. A Wasp, however, used its abdomen bottle for less serene purposes. One toggle from the weapons node and the Klein bottle in the abdomen collapsed, dumping a hundred kilometers of antimatter plasma into real space, creating an imbalance the plasma immediately rectified—with explosive force.

  Bottle secure, Kurj’s node A thought. It highlighted the bottle in a spectrum of color, red at the mouth, shading into orange as it narrowed. Then the bottle vanished, looping out of normal space. It reappeared where it intersected itself, now a vibrant purple color that shaded into red as it curved outward to form its mouth.

  Show image in complex space, Kurj thought. The rest of the bottle appeared, yellow, green, and blue on the loop over its body. A green haze surrounded it, indicating all systems were operational.

  Kurj turned his attention outward. The flotilla was in the Hammerjack star system, where sixteen planets circled a yellow-white sun. They drifted beyond the orbit of the outermost planet, so far out that Hammerjack was no more than a bright star.

  Give me a readout of local space, Kurj thought.

  The Wasp vanished and a new display formed, superimposed over space, revealing the neighborhood’s secrets. The flotilla had taken up position in a disk of debris that ringed the star system, but the chunks of rock were few and far between compared to the ships. Local space claimed about one atom per cubic centimeter, a desolation emptier than any laboratory vacuum. Electromagnetic fields filled the “void” with a turbulent, bellicose plasma, highlighted on the display in reds and blues so intense they vibrated.

  Kurj focused on the distant battle cruiser, a gleaming bar against the stars. Roca’s Pride, acknowledge.

  Attending, the battle cruiser rumbled.

  Location of target? Kurj asked. A spark appeared, a distant asteroid highlighted in white.

  The cruiser growled in Kurj’s mind. Demonstration primed.

  Proceed.

  The Wasp arrowed toward the spark, and Kurj went with it, streaming through the vibrant fields of space. The asteroid grew from a speck to a rocky body about 260 kilometers in diameter. The Wasp jettisoned its abdomen and veered away, but Kurj flew on with the abdomen, bearing down on the asteroid.

  Show bottle, Kurj thought. The display of the Wasp’s abdomen reappeared, its Klein bottle glowing like a ghost. Only seconds from the asteroid now, the abdomen showed no sign of slowing.

  Drill extend. That came from the fleeing Wasp.

  A massive drill extended from the abdomen. Then the entire abdomen crashed into the asteroid, pulverizing its surface. The drill blasted its way through rock, embedding the abdomen deep within the small planetoid. The VR simulation turned the rocky body into a skeleton representation, showing the Klein bottle glowing within it.

  Klein field collapse, the Wasp thought.

  The bottle suddenly twisted into real space—along with all its stored antimatter. Unable to confine so much plasma in so small a volume, the abdomen detonated the asteroid, the explosion driven by a plasma that annihilated matter. In majestic silence the asteroid flew apart, most of it annihilated, the remaining debris hurtling in all directions as the void raged with fountains of gamma photons, particle showers, and radiant floods of energy.

  Data poured in from the flotilla ships: photon wavelengths, nuclei distributions, energy profiles, plasma pressure, particle densities, time scales, radiation damage, impact trajectories, and so on, every datum examined, sorted, and stored.

  Test successful, Roca’s Pride rumbled.

  Kurj sent his thought out to the flotilla. Good work.

  A sense of satisfaction emanated from the ships.

  Proceed with tests, Kurj thought. Switching out.

  Out, the ships echoed.

  As Kurj withdrew his mind from the flotilla psiberweb, space became translucent. He could see the web now, a mesh stretching to infinity. The presence of his mind curved it into a narrow circular hill, and his peripheral thoughts ringed the peak in concentric ridges that spread out in bigger and bigger circles, like the ripples made by dropping a rock into water, or the intensity plot of the diffraction pattern for a circular aperture.

  War Room, Kurj thought.

  The hill sank into the mesh. His mind re-formed in a new region with many other peaks, indicating the many telops working in this part of the web at tasks similar to his.

  Ψ gate, he thought.

  Accessed, node A thought, and the gate transformed his mind back into spacetime.

  Kurj became aware of voices and machines humming below and holographic starlight from the dome above. He looked out at the War Room, hundreds of light-years from the flotilla war games. Still sensitized from the web, he could actually trace lines of thought in the amphitheater. Subtler tendrils were hard to pick out, but the sturdier cables glowed. They all worked together like a well-ordered machine, tuned by his mind to mathematical precision.

  A disruptive cord caught his attention, a sense of ripe innocence and vitality. He focused on it and a holoscreen on his chair activated, showing him the body that went with the mind.

  A fine body indeed.

  She was a page, one among the group of men and women who served the telops, or telepathic operators, in the War Room. Pages brought water or food, made pleasant conversation, and in general nurtured the telops. Kurj had found it improved performance. When telops surfaced from the web, disoriented and fatigued, they preferred being tended by pleasant humans instead of machines.

  This girl wore a green jumpsuit with a sparkling trim on the collar. Curly brown hair floated around her shoulders. Although she wasn’t a spectacular beauty, she had a pretty face with a sweet quality.

  File on subject, Kurj thought.

  Accessing optics, node E answered.

  Glyphs scrolled alongside the girl’s image. She came from the planet Titrate II, in the Imperial Chemical Sector. The orphanage in a shack town there had brought this girl into an immigration center at one of the starports. Unable to support all their children, they were sending the older ones offworld, a questionable practice given that most ships took them as indentured crew. To hide that violation of child labor laws, dock officials called them “wards of the ship,
” in essence claiming the spacecraft were their guardians.

  An ISC major, one G. S. R. Bozner, had been on business at the immigration center that day. Taken by the girl’s sweet nature, he arranged for her employment as a page on the Orbiter. She worked hard and did her job well. In fact, an analysis suggested several of the telops were falling in love with her.

  Kurj frowned. Pages should be pleasant, yes, but this girl went beyond agreeable. She distracted. It made no difference that she had no idea she created disorder. The mere fact of her presence disrupted the smooth operation of his War Room.

  Seeker, he thought.

  Attending.

  Get me security team p.

  Link established. Jagernaut Primary Hirsh waiting.

  Give him access.

  The Jagernaut who headed Kurj’s private security force thought, Attending, sir. Although Hirsh had a strong mind, next to Kurj’s rumbling power his thought seemed muted.

  Hirsh, download the profile in my holomap file.

  Downloaded, Hirsh answered.

  Have the page described in that profile taken to my quarters, procedure 803.

  Yes, sir.

  Switching out, Kurj thought. Then he turned his attention to other matters. He still a great deal of work to do.

  * * *

  Cloaks of snow blanketed the long slope from the lake to the house. Inside, Soz and Jaibriol sat huddled within a blanket on their bed. They had built their one-room home three kilometers from the site where, a year ago, they found the carnivorous roots. They named the roots a Prism people trap, in honor of the Venus flytrap, an Earth plant GeoComp claimed resembled it.

  A light burned in the corner of the room. To save the charge of their sole remaining motion-sensor lamp, they were using a handmade lamp fueled with oil from the bushes they called triops, for their resemblance to a triceratops.

  Jaibriol shifted his arms around Soz’s bulk. “How much colder do you think it will get?”

  “Today? Or in general?”

  “Either. Neither.” He exhaled. “I just need to talk. This waiting grinds me down.”

  She readjusted her weight. “Last time I checked GeoComp’s estimate of the year, it was the same. About seven and a half Earth years, and we’re at the start of winter.” It wasn’t a true winter, though, given the way their distance from Blue varied as they orbited Red. “Maybe it will warm up again when we come back into the sunlight.” She hoped so. The snow had been falling for ten hours, and seventy hours more remained until dawn.

  Soz shifted her weight again, trying to get comfortable. “I need a stardock loading crane to move.”

  Jaibriol laid his hand on the swell of her abdomen. “Can you feel him kick?”

  “Like a smash-ball league.”

  “Is that normal?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never had a baby before.”

  A memory came to her, one she had long kept hidden, of her miscarriage seventeen years ago, when she lost the only other child she had ever conceived. She and Jato, her husband, had mourned deeply. But she had been unable to speak of it, leaving him to face his grief in silence. Her inability to share her feelings had been one reason he later divorced her. She blamed herself. Yet with Jaibriol it didn’t matter. He understood her without words, which for some reason let her open up to him as she had never done with anyone else.

  She felt Jaibriol’s mind brush hers and then reach out to their son. The baby’s brain hadn’t formed enough for conscious thought, but at a more primitive level the three of them already shared a bond.

  Jaibriol was watching her. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded, then groaned with another contraction. “Except for this.”

  “Shouldn’t you do that breathing MedComp taught us?”

  “I can’t concentrate on it.”

  “Maybe you could program your node to make you do it.”

  It was worth a try. Attend, she thought.

  Attending, her node answered.

  Can you make my body do the breathing business?

  I can exert a degree of control over your muscles. However, your natural responses are better suited to delivery.

  Jaibriol’s forehead creased as he tried to follow the silent conversation. “It won’t do it?”

  “It wants me to do the work myself. Says I’m better at having babies than it is.”

  He smiled. “I guess so.”

  Soz grunted as another contraction hit. It went on forever, though her node claimed it took less than two minutes.

  When she relaxed, Jaibriol said, “These are closer together than before.”

  Time interval between contractions is about two minutes, her node offered.

  “I can’t tell—what the—?” Soz frowned as a rush of water poured down her thighs and soaked into the bed.

  “No!” Jaibriol tightened his arms around her. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Jaibriol needs to calm down, her node thought.

  Don’t you have anything more helpful that? Soz asked. Like what the hell just happened? Am I having a problem?

  Your water broke.

  Oh. Relief swept over her. That’s normal, isn’t it?

  Yes. I had some concern, because it usually breaks before this stage of labor.

  How long since my labor started?

  Ten hours.

  “What’s going on?” Jaibriol asked. “What is it saying?”

  “It says I’m fine.” With a smile, she added, “Except I can’t breathe with you squeezing me so hard.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” He relaxed his embrace. “What is all this fluid?”

  “My water broke.” Another contraction hit, and she blew out a stream of air. “Remember? MedComp says that happens.”

  “Then everything is all right?”

  Node? she asked.

  Accessing optical nerve. It produced a display of data showing blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and so on, for both the baby and Soz.

  “It looks all right,” Soz said.

  Jaibriol leaned his head on hers, and she felt the pressure of his mind, gentle against hers, the way they had practiced it.

  “Can you see it?” she asked.

  “Faintly.” He sounded more relaxed. “It does look all right.” He feels all right too. Jaibriol’s thought surrounded Soz and their son with a sense of warmth.

  Soz smiled. That he does.

  Jaibriol shifted position, sitting against the wall behind them, drawing her with him. Leaning back with her legs stretched out was one of the few positions that eased her weight.

  Another contraction came and she huffed with MedComp’s vexatious breathing exercises. They sat through several more contractions in silence, except for Soz’s breathing.

  “This isn’t what I expected,” Jaibriol finally said. “I thought it would happen much faster, with much commotion.”

  “That comes later.” Soz grinned. “It starts after the birth and gets worse for the next twenty years. Or at least it seemed that way with my younger siblings—ah!” Another contraction came, like a bumpy conveyor belt turning inside her, and she made herself huff and puff. When it eased, she muttered, “I hate these exercises. They don’t help.”

  “Are they really necessary?”

  Node? she thought. Can I stop?

  If you wish, it thought. They are meant to ease labor. If they irritate you, they aren’t fulfilling their purpose.

  “The node says I can stop if I want,” Soz said.

  Status report, it thought. Cervical dilation at ten centimeters, effacement at 98 percent, station at +4.

  What does that mean? Soz asked.

  You are about to give birth. I suggest you drink more water.

  Jaibriol was watching her face. “What is it?”

  “The node says I’m about to give birth.”

  “We know that. So where is the baby?”

  “I don’t know. Can you get me some water?”

  Jaibriol eased away from her to pick up the jug
of purified water they had set on the floor. He unsealed it and filled the wide-mouthed lid with fluid.

  Soz drank it all. As she was pouring more, a contraction wracked her body and she dropped the cup, spilling water on the bed.

  “Ah!” She heaved in a breath, trying to regain her dignity. “This is worse than running obstacle courses.”

  Jaibriol managed a smile. “Must be good exercise.”

  She grunted, then poured more water and drank it. “I’d rather run obstacles. Why don’t we quit and finish tomorrow?”

  “Soshoni.”

  “Well, it was just a thought.” When he grinned, she tugged him back to sit with her.

  “Do you think it will keep getting worse?” he asked.

  “I’ve no idea. I just want to push this guy out.”

  He sat back up like a shot. “You’re going to push? NOW?”

  “I think so.”

  Jaibriol scrambled off the bed and crouched by the equipment they had arranged on the floor. He washed his hands with the boiled water from the big thermos, then opened the sterilization box and set its contents on the bed within Soz’s reach: air syringe, surgical scissors, forceps, towels, and several blankets he had woven, using yarn he made from the hemp of their oatburl crop. As he got back on the bed, Soz leaned forward and he slid behind her, his legs on either side of her body. Another urge to push hit her and she braced her elbows against his thighs, bearing down hard.

  So it went, Soz straining again and again. And again. And again. For one hour.

  Two.

  Three.

  Soz groaned, sweat dripping down her face. “Why doesn’t he come out?” From their son she felt a vague agitation, unformed and unfocused.

  Jaibriol slid out from behind her, piling pillows around her body. Then he moved between her knees. “Soz! I see him!”