Transcendence hu-3

by Charles Sheffield

  “Warned him of what?” Darya was tired of this.

  Nenda shook himself free of Atvar H’sial’s grasp and slumped into a seat. “Of the obvious thing.” His voice was exasperated. “Dulcimer makes his living as a pilot. But he’s a Chism Polypheme, so that means he’s paranoid and expects people to try to rob him. His stored displays are exactly how I’d expect them to be — totally useless! He has all the real stuff hidden in his head, where no one can steal it. There’s nothing but lies in the data bank. Pilfer from him and use that to fly with, and you’re a dead duck.”

  “With respect, Atvar H’sial would like to make a statement,” J’merlia put in. He had been translating the argument for the Cecropian. “Dulcimer is a liar, says Atvar H’sial, but he also has low cunning. We must assume that he made himself absent not by accident at this time, but by design.”

  “Why?” Graves asked. He bit back the urge to order J’merlia to stop acting like a slave to Atvar H’sial. J’merlia was a free being now — even if he didn’t want to be.

  “In order to divide our group against itself,” the Lo’tfian translator went on, “as it has just been divided by the fighting of Louis Nenda and Captain Rebka. Dulcimer’s influence is maximized when we are not united. Also, he wished us to realize what we seem to be proving for ourselves, by our substitution of emotion for thought: without the Polypheme, we have no idea how to penetrate the Anfract. You have been playing Dulcimer’s game.” Atvar H’sial’s blind white head swung to survey the whole group. “If this battle does not cease, Dulcimer will surely return — to gloat over our disarray.”

  Atvar H’sial was getting through — Darya knew it, because Louis Nenda and Hans Rebka would not look at each other.

  “Hell, we weren’t fightin’,” Nenda muttered. “We were just havin’ a discussion about where we want to go.”

  “That’s right,” Rebka added. “We wouldn’t know what to tell Dulcimer, even if he was here.”

  “Yes, we would!” It had taken a long time, but Darya could finally make her point. “If Dulcimer can get us to the Anfract, Kallik and I can give him a destination inside it.”

  At last she had their attention. “If you’ll sit still for a few minutes, without fighting, I’ll show you the whole thing. Or Kallik will — it was really her idea.” She glanced at Kallik, but the little Hymenopt sank to the floor, while her ring of black eyes flickered in the signal of negation. “All right, if you don’t want to, I’ll do it. And I can use this same display.”

  Darya took over the control console, while the others moved to sit where they could easily see. They watched silently as she outlined her own analysis of geodesics around the Anfract, mated it with Kallik’s sifting of planetary sightings within the complex, and carried on to provide a summary of computed locations.

  “Five or six possibles,” she finished. “But luckily previous expeditions have provided good-quality images of each one. Kallik and I reviewed them all. We agree on just one prime candidate. This one.”

  She was zooming into the Anfract display along one of her computed light-paths, a dizzying, contorted trajectory with no apparent logic to it. A star became visible, and then, as Darya changed the display scale and the apparent speed of approach, the field of view veered away from the swelling disk of the sun. A bright dot appeared.

  “Planet,” Julian Graves whispered. “If you are right, we are looking at something lost for more than eleven millennia: Genizee, the Zardalu cladeworld.”

  A planet, and yet not a planet. They were closing still, and the point of light was splitting.

  “Not just one world,” Darya said. “More of a doublet, like Opal and Quake.”

  “Not too like either one, I hope.” The anger had gone out of Hans Rebka and he was staring at the display with total concentration. As the world images drew closer he could see that there were differences. Quake and Opal had been fraternal twins, the same size though grossly dissimilar in appearance. The Anfract doublet was more like a planet and its single huge moon, the one blue-white and with a surface hazily visible between swirls of cloud cover, the other, just as bright though only half the size, glittering like burnished steel. Darya’s display in accelerated time showed the gleaming moon, tiny even at highest magnification, whirling around the planet at dizzying speed, against a fixed backdrop of steady points of light. Rebka peered at the planet and its moon, not sure what it was that forced him to such intense examination.

  “And now we need Dulcimer, more than ever,” Louis Nenda added, breaking Rebka’s trance. Nenda, too, had been sitting quietly through Darya’s presentation, but during the approach trajectory he had twisted and writhed in his seat as though matching its contortions.

  “Why?” Darya felt hurt. “I just showed you the way to go into the Anfract.”

  “Not for any vessel I ever heard of.” Nenda shook his dark head. “There’s not a ship in the arm could follow that path an’ stay in one piece. Not even this monster. We gotta find an easier way in. That means we need Dulcimer. We gotta have him.”

  “Quite right,” said a croaking voice at the entrance to the control chamber. “Everybody needs Dulcimer.”

  They all turned. The Chism Polypheme was there, sagging on his coiled tail against the chamber wall. The dark green of his skin had faded and lightened to the shade of an unripe apple. While all had been intent on Darya’s presentation, no one had noticed his entry or knew how long he had been slumped there.

  Atvar H’sial had predicted that the Chism Polypheme would return to gloat. She had been wrong. He had returned, but from the look of him he was far from gloating. While they watched, Dulcimer’s tail wobbled from under him and he slid lower down the wall. Louis Nenda swore and hurried to his side. The scanning eye on its short eyestalk had withdrawn completely into the Polypheme’s head, but the master eye above it remained wide open, vague and blissful as it peered up at the stocky Karelian human. Nenda bent and placed his hand on Dulcimer’s upper body.

  He cursed. “I knew it. Look at the green on him. He’s sizzlin’. Without a radiation source! How the blazes could he get so hot, without even leavin’ the Erebus?”

  “Not hot,” Dulcimer murmured. “Little bit warm, that’s all. No problem.” He lay face down on the floor and seemed to sag into its curved surface.

  “A power kernel!” Nenda said. “It has to be. I didn’t know there were any on this ship.”

  “At least four,” E.C. Tally informed them.

  “But shielded, surely, every one of ’em.” Nenda stared suspiciously at the embodied computer. “Aren’t they?”

  “Yes. But when the Chism Polypheme first came on board the Erebus—” Tally paused at Nenda’s expression. He was programmed to answer questions — but he was also programmed to protect himself from physical damage.

  “Go on.” Nenda was glowering. “Amaze me.”

  “He asked me to show him any kernels that might be on board. Naturally, I did so. And then he wondered aloud if there might be any way that a shield could be lowered in just one place, to permit a radiation beam to be emitted from the kernel interior to a selected site outside it. It was not a standard request, but I contain information on such a procedure in my files. So naturally, I—”

  “Naturally, you.” Nenda swore again and prodded Dulcimer with his foot. “Naturally, you showed him just how to cook himself. What junk did they put in that head of yours, Tally, after they pushed the On button? Look at him now, grilled on both sides. If you don’t know enough to keep a Polypheme away from hard radiation… I’ve never seen the skin color so light. He’s really smoking.”

  “Nice and toasty,” Dulcimer corrected from floor level. “Just nice and toasty.”

  “How long before he’ll be back to normal?” Darya asked. She had moved to stand closer to the Polypheme. He did not seem to see her.

  “Hell, I dunno. Three days, four days — depends how big a radiation slug he took. A whopper, from the looks of it.”

  “But we need him ri
ght now. He has to steer us to the Anfract.” She had run off a copy of the computed coordinates of Genizee, and she waved it in Nenda’s face. “It’s so frustrating, when we finally know where we have to go to find the Zardalu…”

  “Zardalu!” said the slurred and croaking voice. The bulging high-resolution eye went rolling from side to side, following the movement of the sheet that Darya was holding. Dulcimer seemed to see her for the first time. His head lifted a little, to move the thick-lipped mouth farther away from the floor. “Zardalu, bardalu. If you want me to fly you to the location listed on what you’re holding there…”

  “We do — or we would, if you were in any shape to do it. But you are—”

  “A trifle warm, s’all.” The Polypheme made a huge effort and managed to stand upright on his coiled tail, long enough for his top arm to reach out and snatch the coordinate sheet from Darya’s hand. He slumped back, lifted the page to within two inches of his master eye, and stared at it vacantly. “Aha! Thirty-third lobe, Questen-Dwell branch. Know a really good way to get there. Do it in my sleep.”

  Darya stepped back as he collapsed again on the floor in front of her. In his sleep? It seemed about the only way that Dulcimer could do it. But from somewhere the Polypheme was finding new reserves of coordination and energy. He wriggled his powerful tail and began to inch single-minded toward the main control chair.

  “Wait a minute.” Darya hurried to stand behind him as he pulled himself up into the seat. “You’re not proposing to fly the Erebus now.”

  “Certainly am.” The five arms were flying over the keyboards seemingly at random, pressing and flipping and pulling. “Have us inside the Anfract in half a minute.”

  “But you’re hot — you admit it yourself.”

  “Little bit hot.” The head turned to stare at Darya. The great slate-gray eye held hers for a second, then turned upward to fix its gaze solidly and vacantly on the featureless ceiling. The five hands moved in a blur across the board. “Just a little bit. When you’re hot, you’re hot. Little bit, little bit, little bit.”

  “Somebody stop that lunatic!” Julian Graves cried. “Look at him! He’s not fit to fly a kite.”

  “Better if I’m hot, you see,” Dulcimer said, throwing a final set of switches before Rebka and Nenda could get to him. “ ’Cause this’s a real bad trip we’re taking, ’n I wouldn’t dare do it if I was cold.” The Erebus was moving, jerking into motion. “Littlebitlittlebitlittlebitlittle.” Dulcimer went into a fit of the giggles, as the ship began a desperate all-over shaking.

  “Whooo-oo-ee. Here we go! All ab-b-oard, shipmates, and you all b-b-better hold on real t-t-t-t-t-t—”

  Chapter Eight

  When Darya Lang was a three-year-old child growing up on the garden world of Sentinel Gate, a robin made its nest on the outside ledge of her bedroom window. Darya told no one about it, but she looked each day at the three blue eggs, admiring their color, wishing she could touch their smooth shells, not quite realizing what they were…

  …until the magical morning when, while she was watching, the eggs hatched, all three of them. She sat frozen as the uniform blue ellipsoids, silent and featureless, gradually cracked open to reveal their fantastic contents. Three downy chicks struggled out, fluffy feathers drying and tiny beaks gaping. At last Darya could move. She ran downstairs, bubbling over with the need to tell someone about the miracle she had just witnessed.

  Her house-uncle Matra had pointed out to her the importance of what she had experienced: one could not judge something from its external appearance alone. That was as true for people as it was for things.

  And it also applied, apparently, to the Torvil Anfract.

  The references spoke of thirty-seven lobes. From outside, the eye and instruments confirmed them. But as the Erebus entered the Anfract and Darya’s first panic subsided, she began to recognize a more complex interior, the filigree of detail superimposed on the gross externals.

  Dulcimer knew it already, or he had sensed it with some pilot’s instinct denied to Darya. They had penetrated the Anfract along a spiraling path, down the center of a dark, starless tube of empty space. But then, when to Darya’s eyes the path ahead lay most easy and open to them, the Polypheme slowed the ship to a cautious crawl.

  “Getting granular,” said the croaking voice from the pilot’s seat. “Easy does it.”

  Easy did not do it. The ship was moving through vacuum, far from any material body, but it jerked and shuddered like a small boat on a choppy sea. Darya’s first thought — that they were flying through a sea of small space-time singularities — made no sense. Impact with a singularity of any size would destroy the Erebus totally.

  She turned to Rebka, secured in the seat next to her. “What is it, Hans? I can’t see anything.”

  “Planck scale change — a big one. We’re hitting the quantum level of the local continuum. If macroscopic quantum effects are common in the Anfract, we’re due for all sorts of trouble. Quantum phenomena in everyday life. Don’t know what that would do.” He was staring at the screens and shaking his head. “But how in heaven did Dulcimer know it was coming? I have to admit it, Nenda was right — that Polypheme’s the best, hot or cold. I’d hate to have to fly through this mess. And what the hell is that?”

  There was a curious groaning sound. The jerking had ended and the ship was speeding up again, rotating around its main axis like a rifle bullet. The groaning continued. It was the Chism Polypheme in the pilot’s chair, singing to himself as he accelerated the Erebus — straight for the heart of a blazing blue-white star.

  Closer and closer. They could never turn in time. Darya screamed and grabbed for Hans Rebka. She tightened her arms around him. Dulcimer had killed them all.

  They were near enough to see the flaming hydrogen prominences and speckled faculae on the boiling surface. Nearer. One second more and they would enter the photosphere. Plunging—

  The sun vanished. The Erebus was in a dark void.

  Dulcimer crowed with triumph. “Multiply-connected! Riemann sheet of the fifth order — only one in the whole spiral arm. Love it! Wheeee! Here we go again.”

  The blue-white star had popped into existence behind them and was rapidly shrinking in size, while they went spinning along another narrowing tube of darkness. There was a rapid series of stomach-wrenching turns and twists, and then all lights and power in the Erebus had gone and they were in free-fall. “Oops!” said the croaking voice in the darkness. “Hiatus. Sorry, folks — just when we were nearly there, too. This is a new one on me. I don’t know how big it is. We just have to wait it out.”

  There was total silence within the ship. Was it no more than a simple hiatus? Darya wondered. Suppose it went on forever? She could not help thinking about the stories of the Croquemort Time-well. The earlier twisting and spinning had affected her balance centers and her stomach, and now the free-fall and the darkness were making it worse. If it went on for much longer she felt sure that she would throw up. But to her relief it was only a couple of minutes before the screens flashed back to life, to show the Erebus moving quietly in orbit around a translucent and faintly glowing sphere. Wraiths of colored lights flickered and swirled within it. Occasionally they would vanish for brief moments and leave transparency; at other times the sphere became totally opaque.

  “And here we are,” Dulcimer announced. “Right on schedule.”

  Darya stared again at the displays. She was certainly not seeing the planet and moon that she and Kallik had proposed as Genizee, the Zardalu homeworld.

  “Here we are? Then where are we?” Louis Nenda said, asking Darya’s question. He was in a seat behind her.

  “At our destination.” The roller coaster through the twisted structure of the Anfract had done Dulcimer good. The Chism Polypheme sounded cheerful and proud and was no longer sagging in his seat. “There.” He pointed with his middle arm to the main display. “That’s it.”

  “But that’s not where we want to go,” Darya protested.

/>   The great slaty eye rolled in her direction. “It may not be where you want to go, but it’s the coordinates that you gave me. They lie right in the middle of that. Since I am opposed to all forms of danger, this is as close as I will take the ship.”

  “But what is it?” Julian Graves asked.

  “What it looks like.” Dulcimer sounded puzzled. “A set of annular singularities. Isn’t that what you were all expecting?”

  It was not what anyone had been expecting. But now its existence made perfect sense.

  “The Anfract is tough to enter and hard to navigate around,” Hans Rebka said. “But it has been done, many times, and ships came back to prove it. Yet not one of them reported finding a world like the sightings of Genizee made with high-powered equipment from outside the Anfract. So it stands to reason there has to be some other barrier that stops ships from finding and exploring Genizee. And a set of shielding singularities like this would do it. Enough to scare most people off.”

  “Including us,” Darya said. Space travel Rule #1: avoid major singularities; Rule #2: avoid all singularities.

  “No chance,” Louis Nenda said. “Not after we dragged all this way.”

  Darya stared at him. It was occurring to her, at the least convenient moment, that the reason why Hans Rebka and Louis Nenda got on so badly was not that they were fundamentally different. It was that they were fundamentally the same. Cocky, and competent, and convinced of their own immortality. “But if all those other ships came here and couldn’t get in,” she said, “then why should we be any different?”

  “Because we know something they didn’t know,” Rebka said. He and Nenda apparently enjoyed one other thing in common: cast-iron stomachs. The flight into the Anfract that had left Darya weak and nauseated had affected neither one of them.