Analog Science Fiction and Fact - 2014-03

by Penny Publications

  When all of this was done, the judge asked Coley whether Shylif's accusations were true.

  Coley nodded—and Toby saw the faces of his family members crumple in shock and disbelief. Toby had never seen anything like this in real life before, and witnessing it was utterly unlike watching a court drama. This was not an entertainment; it was just sad.

  "I'm sorry," Coley said. He hung his head.

  Shylif's lips curled in a sneer. "Is that all you have to say for yourself?"

  Now, unexpectedly, Coley raised his head looked Shylif in the eye. "No. No, it's not.

  "I did some terrible things when I was a young man. That's over sixty years ago now, for me. I know it's less for you. Either way, it's time that's gone, and so much has happened since.... I was saved by a woman who became my wife, and she made me into the man I am now. But I know I can never escape who I was, or what I did."

  He looked up at the judge, and now Toby understood why the AI that presided over the courtroom was given a human face. Coley knew he was addressing a presence that dwelt behind the man in front of him, but at times like this one needed to put a human face on the moment. "Sir," he said, "I'll face justice for this, and for the other things I did. It's time, I guess. But you have to know," and now he turned back to Shylif, "what that means."

  Jaysir and Toby exchanged a glance, and both leaned forward to hear better.

  "What do you mean?" said Shylif suspiciously.

  "I'm not doing this to salve my own conscience," said Coley. "I'm too old and too much time has passed for remedies like that. And don't think that any outcome will make you feel better, because we both know it won't.

  "I'll accept the judgment of the court. It won't do any good. It won't bring Ouline back; it won't right the wrongs, it won't heal the wounds.

  "It's... just one of those things that has to be done."

  Silence descended on the court. Shylif stood like a statue, while Coley's family squirmed in their seats. Suddenly, the judge picked up his gavel and its descent made a clap of sound that echoed through the space.

  "Sebastine Coley," he said, "how many descendants do you have?"

  Startled, Coley said, "Uh... I have five children, and they're all married. They've each got three or four kids and some of those've got kids now, too..."

  The judge nodded sharply. "Sebastine Coley, I sentence you to recount the story of what you did to harm the people beloved of the man Shylif, one at a time to each and every member of your family that is old enough to understand the tale. You will do so in the presence of Shylif, the complainant, so that he can be assured that you do not lie or leave any detail out. Every person in your line will know from your own lips exactly what you did." He banged the gavel again, and the court was dismissed.

  A look of horror had come over Coley's face on hearing these instructions. Now he collapsed to his knees, sobbing. But Shylif, standing over him, lowered his head in thought for a long moment, and then nodded.

  "I am satisfied," he said.

  15

  One day Toby lowered his glasses down his nose, and frowned at the sudden appearance of heavily laden carts on the neighborhood footpaths, and cargo quadcopters over the trees. They all buzzed about with a sense of excitement, and many of the neighbors were out on their porches watching. Bots ran to and fro as well; some were setting up tables on the lawn of the Keishion estate.

  He dismissed the scenario he was exploring and walked over. "What's going on?"

  A bot bowed to him. "Tomorrow is end-ofturn, sir. We are preparing a potlatch party."

  "Tomorrow?" He'd really lost track of time. It felt like the city had just gotten back on its feet. If this was how turn's-end felt after wintering-over for only two and a half years, what was it like when the turns took their usual thirty?

  He skittered around nervously too, until he ran into Corva. She was sitting in one of her favorite places, the stone wall that ran into the house; and she was reading a book.

  "Oh, just ignore it," she said when he pointed at the organized chaos going on around them. "It's just turn's-end. Join in or not, it's entirely up to you."

  "Oh."

  So he tried to be nonchalant; still, he'd only experienced this gigantic transition a few times so far. Corva had grown up with it, had seen it literally hundreds of times. He couldn't help but imagine himself a week from now, silent and still as a dead man and lying in a cicada sarcophagus. He'd be behind locked doors in a hermetically sealed chamber, the house's solar heat exchangers keeping his body so cold he'd freeze solid if not for the antifreeze in his veins. This was normal? He'd done it on the flight to Sedna, and again on his way to Rockette. Since then he'd experienced hibernation—what, five times? He would never get used to it.

  Time had f lown while he brooded over what Halen had said. Toby hadn't come up with a good answer to Corva's brother. He'd just started avoiding him. The whole idea of the god-gambit preyed on him, though. It was so fundamentally dishonest he didn't even know where to start to say why. It was creepy. Halen thought it was the only way to go.

  All of it—turn's-end, the god-gambit, the inescapable fact that 99 percent of the people living in the lockstep were from civilizations that came into existence while he slept—all of it forced him into an awed awareness of time. Saplings would grow in the yard while he slept tomorrow. If not for the acceleration of the blockade, entire trees would appear during that one night. The grass would be long and weed-shot between the closing and opening of one's eyes.

  So much had happened, too, in recent weeks, and yet Wallop was still asleep. Nathan Kenani had only just closed the lid on Toby's bed, as far as the traitorous guide was concerned. Kirstana had only just said goodbye to Toby, probably in full expectation of seeing him when she awoke. So it was on seventy thousand other worlds. They were all wintering over simultaneously, billions frozen solid, waiting the tick of a new turn. Between one beat of their hearts and the next, whole lives would flash past on the quick worlds near the stars.

  People did pause to think about it, he knew. Evayne tapped into the wonder and terror that lurked under the sensible facade of the lock-steps; the myths and the Toby cult channeled those feelings in directions that were politically useful to Evayne and Peter.

  Toby was curious, and the turn's-end parties sounded like fun, so he convinced Corva to go out with him, and they house-hopped through the neighborhood. Everywhere they went, people pushed food and drink on them. They ate a lot of fresh fruit. Everybody also seemed to have one or more big pieces of machinery they couldn't fit into their vaults. These were doomed to sit under the rain and weather for over two years if nobody claimed them; Corva offered advice about how to store them based on her studies in ruin design; and they moved on to the next house.

  It was fun, and a good distraction to the prospect of imminent hibernation. When they got home it was very late and nobody was up. The house's windows were sealed with metal covers, and now Toby could see how the place was built with a bright and relatively open outer layer, and an inner core containing the bedrooms and cicada machinery. After stripping off her shoes, Corva headed in that direction, but he hung back.

  She looked around, frowned. "What's the matter?"

  "It still seems unnatural to me."

  She laughed in surprise. "But you hold the record for the longest hibernation of all time!"

  He crossed his arms and looked away. This wasn't funny to him at all, and after a moment Corva seemed to realize it. She tilted her head at the kitchen. "Let's sit up a while."

  They sat up and shared the last juice in the fridge. Bots were quietly boxing the house's contents after photographing the exact position and orientation of every stray sock and data pad. They'd recreate the scene with perfect fidelity in two and a half years.

  He felt nervous and edgy, and also utterly weary, so balanced on the kitchen stool as if it were the top of a tree. Toby hadn't told Corva what Halen had said to him, and he didn't know how to talk about it now. Instead he said, "
My mom's slept as long as I have. Almost. I have to go to her, Corva."

  She didn't reply. They both knew Destrier would be crawling with Evayne and Peter's troops. They would be waiting for Toby. Going there was his obvious next move.

  "She'll keep."

  He blinked at her; to his surprise Corva blushed.

  "Gods, Toby, she's waited for you for fourteen thousand years! She can wait a little longer."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I mean you could... you could stay here." The last word was almost inaudible. She still wouldn't look at him.

  "Corva, I can't be your house-guest forever."

  "That's not what I mean." Now she was seriously blushing. "Oh, Hell." She jumped up and made to move away but he grabbed her hand.

  "I'd like that," he said. "I didn't know if you really wanted me around."

  "What are you stupid? Of course I want you around!" She hadn't pulled her hand away. "But you have some world or other to save, and the Empress of Time to wake, and things like that. I never thought you'd want to..."

  He was afraid of meeting his mother again. Something had happened to her, something had broken, he was sure of it. Who would abandon the rest of their family—their whole world!—to wait for one lost son to come home? The thought that she'd done that made him profoundly uncomfortable. Once again, he had no idea how to explain that to Corva.

  So he didn't try.

  He kissed her instead.

  Orpheus lay across Toby's belly like a thousand-pound weight. The denner was snoring, a faint but reassuring sound.

  The knock on the bedroom door came again. Toby blinked, and raised his head to look groggily around. He'd slept... that's right, he'd kissed Corva last night. It had been hard to get to sleep after that, thinking about her, and also about—

  —More than two years passing in one night.

  He sat up, rolling Orpheus aside. The denner crawled into some bunched-up blankets, and went still again.

  "Garren?" It was the voice of Corva's father. The knock came again.

  Toby looked around, then down at himself.

  There was no sign that more than an ordinary night had passed. Intellectually he knew this was the result of vast amounts of work by bots and biomedical systems; if he'd slept for two and a half years, it was mostly in a semi-frozen state. The room would have been warming up for weeks, the bots and hibernation systems working day and night to restore his body and reverse all signs of decay within the room. He shuddered at the thought, then said, "I'm here!"

  "Can you come outside, son? Something's... well, we've got visitors."

  Toby had been climbing out of bed; he stopped, and stared at the door. Then: "Give me five minutes."

  There was no point even wondering who it would be. Whoever it was, things were out of his control again. All he had that was his were his few minutes of freshening up in the suite's little bathroom. He could pick out his own clothes, ruffle Orpheus's fur. Then, he took a deep breath and put his hand on the door latch. Time to let go of the dream he'd spun with Corva last night.

  The Keishions were waiting in the hall, faces grave. Toby walked past them and downstairs. Corva stood by the front door, hands clenched in front of her. They made eye contact, then he stepped outside.

  Ranks and ranks of military bots stood on the Keishion's lawn. He'd seen this kind of vista before, but never in real life. Armed quadcopters hovered in the air above the mechs, and further off gray airships sat in the sky like condensed clouds.

  A delegation of men and women stood in front of the bots. There must have been at least twelve of them, all in fancy uniforms. A woman in the center stepped forward, her face shining with some kind of excitement, and as she bowed deeply to him, so did all the others. As did all the bots. The copters dipped as well. Past these dipping heads, Toby could see the astonished faces of the neighbors he'd been partying with last night.

  "Welcome," said the woman in a husky voice. "Welcome, Tobias Wyatt McGonigal, to the lockstep of your creation, and to the world of Thisbe!"

  And all those in sight murmured their wonder, and bowed even lower.

  16

  The luxury aircar was whisper-quiet, and this made it awkwardly obvious that nobody was talking. Outside the tinted windows, the sky went blood-red suddenly, as if to reinforce Toby's mood.

  During all the bowing and speechifying in front of the Keishion's house, Toby had spotted Halen. Corva's brother was lurking about on the edge of the delegation. Toby had ignored the bowing multitude and walked up to Corva's brother.

  "You just had to tell them, didn't you? You just couldn't wait for me to make up my own mind what to do. You had to force my hand." Nobody else but the immediate family had known his real identity—except for Shylif and Jaysir. Somehow, Toby hadn't doubted for a second that it was Halen who'd told the government.

  He didn't even try to deny it, simply stepping back and shrugging. "I told them, yes, but they'd promised to leave you alone."

  "This is leaving me alone?" Toby swept an arm to show the massed army and the groveling politicians.

  "I know," said Halen.

  "But something's changed."

  Toby glowered out the aircar window now, thinking furiously about what to do. Halen's betrayal was trivial—and maybe justified— given what he'd told Toby next.

  Evayne was on her way to Thisbe. And, according to the government telescopes, she was bringing a whole fleet.

  "Where are we going?" he demanded of the senior government official who sat opposite him.

  "It's a place called Leaning Pines," she said brightly. "It's a resort. It's the best environment we could find. I hope you like it."

  "Like it? What am I supposed to like about any of this?" He glared at her, then Halen, who sat next to her; then he felt Corva's hand on his arm.

  She leaned in close, and whispered, "Can't you see she's terrified?"

  Toby blinked and suddenly got it: these ministers and representatives, seated chatting but glancing at him every few seconds—they weren't escorting him as a prisoner, much less a guest. Toby was a McGonigal; they were all his guests, for Thisbe was his world. They were desperate to make a good impression on an absentee landlord unexpectedly making an inspection.

  "I'm sorry," he said to the woman. She smiled uncertainly and, equally uncertain, he stuck out his hand. "I'm Toby."

  Her face held wonder as she let him shake her limp fingers. "Calastrina de Fanto Esperion," she said. "Appointed proxy of Demographic Twelve of the Great Byte." The Byte, Toby had learned, was Thisbe's C-shaped southern continent. That made Esperion the representative of about six hundred million people.

  "Appointed proxy?" He'd worn his glasses, and could do a search on what she'd just said; but these people knew who he was, and would expect his ignorance. "Not elected?"

  To his surprise, Esperion blushed. "I'm a proxy, not a representative. I didn't want the appointment, but it turns out that I vote, mod, and buy exactly like about fifty million other people. I can be relied on to think and vote the way they would if they were in Council. At least until I get jaded or compromised; I'm only here for another year," she added, as though apologizing.

  So, this place was based on one of the demarchy models. He probably should have studied local politics earlier, but for a change his mind had been on the bigger picture—the whole history of the locksteps, and the place of the McGonigals in them. He looked out the window and sighed, a little ruefully.

  They circled a long, sinuous mountain lake. A collection of truly huge tents lay tumbled across one end of it. "The resort," Corva, said, when she saw where he was looking. "They keep it boxed while we winter over and rebuild it every time. The landscape changes too much for a permanent installation."

  "It's pretty." The curving sheets of tenting were colored in a whole rainbow of tones.

  Corva was very close to him; he could almost feel the heat of her skin on his cheek. "Toby?" she said quietly. "Why did you insist that I come?"
<
br />   Again he sighed. "Because you're the only person who knows who I am and isn't afraid of me—well, except for Shylif and Jaysir, maybe."

  She laughed and sat back. "And Orpheus." But she seemed pleased with his explanation.

  They landed on a gravel beach next to a cold lake—but a real lake, under a real sky, even if that sky was fluorescent green right now. Toby had brought Orpheus with him, and together they crunched down to the edge of the water, distracted by its reality and beauty. The air was crisp and cold.

  "M-Mister McGonigal?"

  He turned to find Corva hiding a smile, and past her a half-circle of dignitaries waiting patiently for him to get over the view. Halen was frowning, his arms crossed, but Toby could tell he was excited, too. Well, this was what he'd wanted.

  "Okay," he said, walking back up the beach to stand next to Corva.

  "What can I do for you?"

  "Yes," he admitted a few hours later. "I can override every cicada bed on the planet."

  They sat at a huge curving oak table inside a vaulted hall with translucent sides. There was wine and coffee and sweets, and for a very long time now Toby had sat listening to one after another local governmental official give speeches in his honor.

  He'd used much of the time to refocus his eyes inside his glasses' view; he'd been learning how the Thisbe government worked and who these people he was sitting with were. About half the ministers consisted of professional politicians, the rest being made up of randomly chosen citizens like Esperion. To qualify for sortition you had to be a high-ranking player in one of a number of different political or economic games; Esperion must be very good indeed. About half of them were really here—the rest were represented by their avatars. There were political parties, but they were ad-hoc and only lasted for one sitting session, which was four years. During that time the ministers ran sophisticated simulations based on their own or their constituents' biases and beliefs, and tried to enlist support for initiatives based on the results of these. Even then, there were no direct votes; the ministers played matching games of the 'would fixing A improve B; would fixing B improve A' sort.