one hundred seconds. This time, the flash was bright red. The large screen altered its schematic display, showed stars bright on black. At its center, a rusty red dot. There was no tremor in the deck to indicate our appalling velocity, had been no jarring lurch as Hanger modified its vector to bring us behind Mars. For one frightened moment, I wondered if I'd have time to open a Schwelle and pass through it. In the same moment, I understood that it didn't really matter, that if I were caught with the starship as it passed instantly into the Xon shadow of its brown dwarf destination, I might just as readily transit through a Schwelle from there. Assuming, of course, that the geometry worked. But I was bone tired of going along for the ride. I formed an intention in my mind, focused upon it, held it poised in preparation for the return of access to the operating system.
thirty seconds, said the starship.
"She won't be there," Jan told me. She clung to my hand, shook my arm like someone trying to attract the attention of the man stepping blindly over the edge of a cliff. "I mean it, August."
fifteen seconds.
"Give me Lune," I said, teeth gritted. Nothing. Nothing yet.
zero seconds. A brilliant white pulse of light. we have 27 seconds in Xon shadow.
I said again, clearly, "Give me Lune."
Nothing happened. The gate remained shut and barred.
Throat dry, I started to say, "Give me Tob—"
A doorway opened in front of me. My brother Jules confronted me, eyes wide and wild.
"About fucking time," he said, and thrust his hand at me, seized me by the right wrist, dragged me into the Schwelle. Over my shoulder, he stared at our sisters, at the spacecraft interior. "Off on a little jaunt, are we? Jan, come through, you really want to know about this, trust me." I caught myself as the gravity changed, and I lurched forward into his brilliantly gaudy landscape. At my back, that shredding sound as the Schwelle closed behind me. "Oh shit," Jules said irritably, "now where have they gone?"
"They just jumped five parsecs, I think," I said. I felt as if my nose were about to start bleeding. Tropical flowers, or their semblance, bloomed everywhere, drenching the air with fragrances. Back in the Matrioshka Brain, the Ra Egg, by the look of things. I looked around stupidly for Lune or Toby. Of course they weren't here. Fat insects bumbled against pods and stamens and ran into my hair; I brushed them away, and they declined to sting me. "Jan and Maybelline went to see the Xon star," I said, and heard that sardonic note again in my voice. Greek gods, black-and-white movie heroics, full-color CGI sets. Ridiculous.
"How interesting." Jules raised one eyebrow. "Great minds evidently do think alike. We've beaten them to it." He made a gesture. A large window opened in the midst of the scarlet and hot yellow and a hundred kinds of green. Not a Schwelle, a different framed sort of hyperrealistic display run by an infinitesimal part of the incomprehensible embedded minds inside this computational construct. "We're getting this feed from the observation pod Jan left in orbit."
I looked into the window. I'd seen it before, in Marchmain's faux, this thing it showed me. The Xon star seethed in blackness, a sparky ring of violet light. Poison. Power. I shrank away from its malignity.
"It's an appalling thing," I said. "Even just this image, even from five parsecs away."
Jules laughed uproariously. "No such luck," he said, chortling. "No, my boys've been busy. Five billion kilometers, that's how far away we are right at the moment, on mutual orbit around it." He saw my expression. "Yes, they just picked up their Sun and carried it over here. Well, more exactly, their Sun carried them. Neatest bit of engineering I've seen in a long time."
"They've been flying here? You say they just lifted their—" I moved my jaw around for a moment. "Okay. Why should I be surprised? We're the fleas on the back of the dog on the back of the elephant. A few moments ago I was trying to convince Jan—" I couldn't go on. My legs felt weak. I tottered, looked around. An old ottoman was positioned immediately behind me in a flower bed, leather cracked and worn with use. I collapsed back onto it and covered my face with my hands. To my surprise, Jules had the grace to say nothing. After a while, I said, "What universe is this? That we're in? Sorry, stupid question, it's just that Jan and The Hanged Man found a way to kludge the substrate, whatever, something like that, so large-scale objects like starships can be shoved through Schwellen. Obviously nobody's going to try that little trick with an entire Matrioshka—"
"Oh, but that's exactly what the guys did." My brother the phony priest sounded absurdly pleased, a proud flea applauding his dog as it jumps through a hoop of fire, as if it had been in charge of the dog-school training. It was the Contest mind-set. My brothers and sisters couldn't help themselves. They thought they were at the center of universe. All the universes. "In their cognate," he reminded me, "there is no Xon star. They've been fascinated by news of it for years. Well, for millennia, I suppose, Dramen or Angelica must have told them. So they upped and headed in this direction. No wonder they were pleased when I brought them Jan's download. It must have been the final item of information they needed to let them cross from one cognate to another. Anyway, that's what they did, couple of hours ago." Roughly the same time the cat had been making a nuisance of semself in my bedroom.
My mind came back into gear with a jolt. I stood up fast.
"Get me Jan," I told the deixis.
Jules, annoyed, started to say, "Oh, do sit down and stop all this juvenile fussing—"
Canvas tore. A window opened upon my sister in her control seat. She stared at me. "Now what the hell? Decided you prefer our company to Jules? Can't blame you."
"Jan, are you still in the brown dwarf Xon shadow?"
Instantly, she was all business. "Hanger?"
I heard the system say, another 22 seconds.
"I don't know how you do this, Jan, but the Matrioshka system is now in orbit around the Xon star in whatever cognate I happen to be in at the moment. Bring your ship through, right now, and you can use the M-Brain as a shield. Do you understand what I'm—"
She was already saying, "Hanged Man, prepare for another transition. Thank you, August."
The Schwelle closed.
I said without hesitating, "Get me Lune."
Nothing. Still no response from the operating system. I tried again. Still a void.
I slumped back onto the couch.
"Not at home, eh? Probably killing something. High drama with space girl, though," my brother said. "But hey, why not, the more family members the merrier."
"Is this why the M-Brain wanted me here?" I said.
"Conceivably, they're an odd lot. All I know it is, they expressed a wish to have a little tete-a-tete with you. God knows why." He sounded sulky.
"Hello, August Seebeck," said the ancient gypsy who was sitting across the rickety green card table from me. "We are happy to see you." This time she wore a dirty golden Shriner's hat over her faded red wig. She picked tobacco off her lip.
"Hello, Madame Olga." Sees all, tells some, that had been the M-Brain manifestation's boast last time I was here, bringing my Great-aunt Tansy and our dog Dugald. Talking animals, everywhere I went. Imagos and untrustworthy things in circus mirrors. "What can I do for you?"
"Think not what you can do for us," the ancient crone said, with a wink. "Think what we can both do for the universe."
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Ember
Kurie Eleëson, the Good Machine, watched him with ser habitual and unyielding impassivity. Steely grace, Ember Seebeck thought with a throttled snort of amusement. He knew the AI was attending to a thousand, or a million, or conceivably a billion separate tasks, observances, self-elected duties. Was se also counting the sparrows as they fell, or performing feats of higher-dimensional mathematics for ser enigmatic amusement? Nothing was out of the question. The machine was eaten up at the core with guilt, as one tends to be after exterminating an entire planetary population of humans, for whatever excellent motives. Ember grimaced; it was, after all, a condition he sha
red, having created the seed artificial intelligence that blossomed into this penitential genocide.
"Penny for your thoughts."
The machine moved slightly—stirred would be too anthropomorphic, too organomorphic for that matter—and he fancied that he felt its regard harden. He shoved the last of his deliciously sinful pale-yellow lemon custard tart into his mouth, slapped the yummy and disgusting stuff between his teeth and his tongue. He chased it down with a gulp of Wild Turkey bourbon, and belched. The Good Machine, of course, ignored this provocation, as always.
"Father—"
Or was that exactly its most irritating and precisely targeted response?
"Don't call me that, K.E. What are you trying to do, send me into fits of remorse? I already said I was sorry." Ember grinned with one corner of his mouth, feeling a fine high humor running in him. Something was surely afoot. That fool kid again, probably. Damned if he'd go and haul the brat's ass out of the fire. Although Lune might be on the scene as well, and just seeing her would give him a moment's fillip. His mouth turned down again. Actually, he realized, the sight of her was more likely to be a guaranteed downer, these days. What the hell did a gorgeous woman like that see in a puling infant?
"By three methods we may learn wisdom," said the Good Machine. "First, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest."
It had the sound of a quotation. "Milton? Milton Berle?"
"Master Kong Tze. Confucius to the barbarians."
Ember repressed a ribald jest. "I take it you've opted for reflection."
The machine moved one arm through a graceful arc, light flung from its brazen rings. A faint ringing, as of distant bells, attended the movement. "Always. Even so, imitation is not only easiest, but deeply informative. I watch you Players of the Contest and map each move in the model of my soul. I am your reflection. Perhaps your contrast."
"I prefer to think that I do not have a soul," Ember grumbled. "Too easy to lose it. But I'm glad to learn that you have one. Is it a comfort?"
"You understand all too well, Ember Seebeck, that your cynicism is trite and unworthy of your gifts. Why do you persist in its exercise?"
For a moment, a fuse of anger raced in him. He stamped it out, renewed his smirk. "I see reality all too clearly to lie to myself. We are trapped in the hellish circular saga of Sisyphus. Roll the stone to the top of the hill, it jumps free of your shoulder, down the hill it tumbles, and Jill goes tumbling after. How futile, how risible. You are a machine, presumably you understand the tedium of mechanical repetition."
"We are all machines, my father. Cut me, do I not bleed?"
He looked at the thing. "Reflection tells me, no, actually."
"You're too intelligent to be so literal-minded. Leave me now."
Insubordinate, Ember stayed put. "Let me tell you about Juni's latest fun idea. She's planning a Tegmark party. I assume you'd like to come too? It's a fancy dress, of course. You'd like her world, it's as empty as the one you destroyed. You could come as the Tin Man."
Kurie Eleëson uttered no rebuke, failed to respond at all. The gleaming bronze casque was motionless, limbs settled to immobility. After a moment of waiting for the thing to chide him or dismiss him again, Ember realized with a throttled cry of fury that the Good Machine had absented semself, withdrawn the tendril of ser consciousness, leaving behind nothing more attentive than a shining but entirely empty suit of armor. He rose, seething with the indignity of it, placed his hands on the thing's shoulders, one breath away from hurling it sideways from its chair to the floor. Even as his fingers closed upon it, the entelechy fields holding its linked rings in their anthropomorphic configuration were released by the global intelligence, and the rings tumbled freely with a loud, resounding clash of cymbals to roll across the floor of the room in a dozen directions.
"God damn it," he cried in Mithran Greek. Then: "Fuck! Get me Toby."
The Schwelle opened upon a scene of murderous frenzy.
"Don't loiter, man," his brother said, glancing over his shoulder. "Give me a hand, won't you?"
"I'm more the cerebral type," he muttered, but went through in a rush. A cold, salty wind nearly blew him off his feet. Tottering, hair flung about in the gale, he seized one large arm of the brute who had Toby gripped around the waist. Classic heavy-lifter despoiler type, worth preserving for Ruth if possible. Three more of the things lay in ungainly postures, fairly badly charred. He got a hold on this one's fingers, and with his own thumb sought for the excruciating point between thumb and forefinger, dug in hard. The hand came free, flew high, came back like a piston to catch him glancingly, as he swung low, across the top of his head. The blow put black sparks on his retina, made him bite his tongue.
Something was wrong with his balance, something more than being clouted on the skull. Toby was emitting sparks of his own, not dark but brilliant blue-and-red fireworks, at his fingertips and all around his tonsured head, like the halo on an angel in a gaudy Mithramas card. The fire jumped to the K-machine's torso, made the hairs stand up on the backs of Ember's arms.
The thing yowled, got hold of Toby more comprehensively, spun him about, tried to break his spine with its knee in his back. Oh well, another one Ruth would have to do without. Ember took his compact 6mm Mazeltov from the holster under his left arm. A gift from Jan, crafted by her Bar Kokhba chums for close-up work, it never left his person, even in the shower or the bathtub. He pressed its snout against the thing's skull, blew brain tissue and mysterious solid-state parts into the air, some of it spattering Toby's coat, neck, and head. A moment later, Ember threw up, although he managed to avoid adding to his brother's lurid decorations.
He was amazed. It had been decades, maybe centuries, since the sight and smell of death had made him vomit. A moment later he realized that this was not, after all, the cause of his nausea. His ears told him he was spinning. The thing slumped, shuddered, shut down. Toby crawled away from under its dead weight, flickering faintly and clutching his spine. Ember stared around him. Huge boxes stenciled in calligraphics he could not read were stacked high in tiers and rows, fixed by diagonal lashing poles, on an immense, dirty-gray, steel deck. Heavy, dark clouds moved overhead, to either side. They swung back and forth in the most disturbing way. The wind surged at him. He felt the last of the yellow custard rising into his throat. The horizon line moved with the clouds, with an additional up-and-down component. He closed his eyes, quickly opened them again as the nausea intensified. An enormous container vessel. Seasick, by God!
To Toby he said, looking around for more of the filthy hostile things, "So, did the earth move for you, too?"
"Ha! The ocean, at any rate."
Tread softly, you boring fellow, for you tread on my jokes. "Any more of these pests? We haven't been very neat, you know? Ruth will be cross. It doesn't leave much to work with."
"Let Ruth come out here and deal with them herself. I don't know. Keep your eyes peeled. One of these containers has a thermonuclear device squirreled away inside. I assume they're after it."
"A nuke? What is this, a Steven Seagal movie set?" But he knew it was far more serious than that. In a sober tone, he asked, "What are they planning to blow up?"
"I rather think they would like to blow me up, and you too, now that you're here."
"The K-machines secreted a pony nuke on a container ship just on the off-chance that one of us would drop by in the middle of the ocean?"
"Stranger things have been known." Toby performed what looked like several agonizing bend-and-stretch exercises, groaning slightly under his breath. "But no, I did the arranging. Heaven knows how they found out about it. Their intelligence is uncanny. Then again, I suppose the same can be said of ours."
Ember put his weapon away. "Would it be too offensively direct to ask what you are planning to blow up?"
"You know better than that, Ember. If you are meant to know, you would already know."
"Yes, all very we
ll, but as you know, I chafe under restrictions. Speaking of which." He brought one hand to his chin, stroked it pensively. "I understand you have an interesting guest these days."
Toby walked away from the corpses, moving in a slightly waddling gait, a landlubber pretending to be a sailor. Or perhaps he had been a sailor at some time. Ember tried to emulate his steps, was jolted several times as the deck moved in the wrong direction, and quickly caught the rhythm. They move toward the back of the enormous vessel. Was that the prow or the stern?
"The boy is a delight," Toby said. "Full of curiosity, quick to respond to novelty, reminds me a little of you back when—"
"Forget about the damned brat," he said sharply. "I'm talking about your other guest."
Glancing over his shoulder with an eloquent smile, Toby said, "Yes, I rather thought you meant Lune. She's out of play, Ember. Surely even you understand that by now. They're mad about each other."
"It makes absolutely no—" A large figure in the uniform of the local merchant marine stepped from concealment in front of Ember. Wind caught the faux officer's brimmed and braided hat, flung it off, sent it rolling and bouncing down the drab corridor between the walls of containers. Jutting thick fingers thrust at Ember's eyes. He slipped to one side like a snake, came up with his left shoulder under the thing's left armpit, moved just so, dislocated the limb, spun away, found his weapon, blew a hole through the middle of the purple-and-apple-red jacket. The thing dropped to the deck. "—sense. I don't believe it. She's got to be feigning her interest. There's less here than meets the eye, fuck it."
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