“Everything checks out here,” Jimmy said over the comm after an hour of calibrations.
“It checks out on our end,” Gavin confirmed.
“We’re heading back now,” Omeri said.
“Acknowledged.”
“We’re good to go,” Jimmy said coming out of the lock.
He sounded happy, but his face was pale. Something didn’t seem right. Omeri traded a glance with Gavin.
Later, Xin told Sheemi Jimmy had suffered radiation exposure. She didn’t see him again until they brought him onto the bus, too weak to walk on his own.
Everyone strapped in.
“Initiate,” Ciib commanded.
Chapter 23 – News
Kellen stepped back. There was no doubt it was Izmit, but something had gone far wrong. The mangled head, the filthy clothes, but more the unhinged look in his eyes. Gatherer had done something to him, but Kellen had no time to ponder it. The two dog chines bounded forward, then stopped as the con bot lifted one of its arms to smash Kellen and Chronicler.
“Hurry! Follow me!” Kellen shouted to Chronicler and sped back under the bot’s body.
As he ran, he pointed the decoupler toward one of its legs and pulled the trigger. Yellow-brown fluid spattered everywhere. He cut into another leg and ran on, looking back to make sure Chronicler followed. A metallic groaning came from above, and as they reached the tunnel entrance, the con bot fell with a tremendous crash.
“Keep going,” Kellen shouted.
They sped down the tunnel. Where was Micro? Had it gotten away safely? There was no time to think. It was all he could do to make his way back, not really knowing the right way, and to keep Chronicler from falling. The chine’s wheels weren’t well-suited for subterranean movement. They moved slower than Kellen would have liked.
Despite the distance they’d covered, Kellen heard wild electronic shrieks behind them. Gatherer wouldn’t give up the chase so easily. The tunnel sloped up again. As Kellen emerged onto the surface, he looked back and saw one of the spider forms racing up the tunnel toward them. He pointed the decoupler at the tunnel roof, pulled the trigger, and swung it in a wide arc. The tunnel collapsed. Falling rock knocked the decoupler out of his hands, and he fell backward. In the spot he’d occupied moments earlier, a single sword-like limb protruded from the rubble, still twitching.
“Where are we?” Chronicler asked.
“We’re almost there. A safe place,” Kellen said, but if Gatherer wanted something badly enough, how safe was it?
The image of Izmit’s leering face came back to him. What was he now? Was any of his friend still left? At least he finally knew what had happened to him, and despite everything, Izmit was still his friend. It relieved him to have that settled at least. He’d have to think of a way to help Izmit later. For now, he had to guide Chronicler to safety.
He studied the canyon they’d entered, unsure of where they were. He knew the general direction they should go, but not which tunnel to pick. They could make their way over the surface, but that was much more dangerous. He was about to take them down a tunnel when Micro emerged from a different one. The little chine shouted excitedly for them to follow.
Micro led them back to Tunnel Town, where the residents mobbed Chronicler. Unlike Abby and Kellen when they’d first arrived, Chronicler had no shortage of news to impart. The questions flew until Mediator sent them away.
Back in their tunnel, Chronicler remained still the rest of the night, its amber eyes dimmed. Kellen recalled its earlier arrival and untimely deactivation, but his worries were unfounded. Chronicler came to life as dawn arrived.
“I’m glad to find you safe and well despite so many dangers,” Chronicler said, after they’d explained what had transpired since their arrival on Iron53.
“Are you really Chronicler?” Kellen asked. “The same one that accompanied us here?”
“Yes,” Chronicler said, “and no. The Chronicler you met in the Array was a partial like myself, but one without any real autonomy.”
“What do you mean by partial?” asked Abby.
“Ah,” Chronicler said. “Chines with sufficient capacity and resources may form partial copies of themselves to operate on their behalf at a distance, providing the effect of presence where they, strictly speaking, are not. At least fully. Partials may be thin or deep. For example, I have substantial autonomy, being a genuine fragment of my parent consciousness.”
“Is that why your earlier self died?”
“Yes. It was too thin, never designed to function without a constant connection. Whereas I designed this self to be independent for a period of time. Even so, I must return eventually to my parent or suffer personality decay followed by death.”
So the chine who deactivated was Chronicler, but so was this chine, and there were others as well. Copies, alternate versions, or backups. Could it be he and Abby and Izmit, even Sayuri, still lived back on Earth? Continuing their lives without ever knowing about the City or Iron53 or any of this? “Are we partials?”
“I do not think so,” Chronicler said. “When transmitted by gate, the departing some is always destroyed in translation. The energies required to map down to the subatomic level make it a destructive process.”
Kellen’s hope evaporated. “Oh. I thought…maybe…”
“What puzzles me, though,” Chronicler went on, as if it hadn’t noticed Kellen’s reaction, “is how a non-chine would be translated in the first place. I am a historian and have studied humans extensively. As a rule, biological creatures are not translatable, but in going through the gate, you were transformed into information, then fabricated in the City, then again here on Iron53.”
Chronicler paused to raise and rotate one wheel, then another, shedding sand. “In other words, the gate cannot transport a biological entity. It can only convey information. That information is used by a fabricator on the receiving end to construct a new some. I suspect First may have modified you two in particular, altered your genetic code, to allow your translations, but in the process, your original somes were likely destroyed. Although only First would know for sure.”
Altered your genetic code. It reminded him of something Izmit had said their first day on Iron53—We four, we’re imperfect. “What do you mean, altered?” Kellen asked.
“That’s why those agent people and the Hexi were dead when they arrived.” Abby jumped up, eyes gleaming. “The gate translated their bodies, but it couldn’t translate their minds. They weren’t the Four. Only we could be translated.”
“What about Sayuri?” Kellen asked, a lump in his throat.
“She was sick, Kel,” Abby said. “Weak from the drugs and what they did to her in that lab.”
Sayuri’s voice sounded dimly in his mind, her last song something he’d never forget. “Yeah,” he acknowledged, the memory still bitter.
He felt strangely satisfied knowing what he’d always feared deep down to be true—they were different. Even their genes had been different.
“Why are you here?” Abby turned abruptly to Chronicler. “You weren’t exiled again, were you?”
“Yes,” Chronicler said, “but by design. My fellow Discoverers and I planned it that way. We needed to find you, and I volunteered. Who better? I’ve always been a student of Earth.”
“What delayed you?” Kellen asked. “We’ve been stranded for weeks.”
“We could not gain access to the gates,” Chronicler said. “But then a ship from Earth arrived at the city, manned by your kind.”
“A ship?” Kellen exclaimed.
“Dauntless it is called. Do you know of it?”
“No,” Kellen said. “I never knew we had ships that could travel that far. Did you know, Abby?”
“No, never.”
“Tell me more about Earth,” Chronicler said. “How do the parents of chines live these days?”
They’d never even had a chance to tell Chronicler about Earth. The Hexi. The war.
“Not well,” Kellen said, and set about explaining how
Earth had come under attack by the Hexi.
“You’ve got to help.” Abby clasped one of Chronicler’s manipulators in her hands. “When we left, things were getting worse and worse. Our city was attacked. My family…”
“We know something of this. Your information corroborates what your people from the ship said. They’ve requested the aid of the Precautionists, and it is their help we are concerned about. You see, the Precautionists have only the interests of the city at heart, and only their particular version of it. While acknowledging Earth’s history is part of chine history, and humans’ role as our creators, they feel no obligation. After all, the Precautionists are the same ones who betrayed First.”
Chronicler reached out, grasped a protrusion in the rock wall, and crushed it to bits. “When Dauntless arrived, we decided we must act. The humans had been seeking the Array to obtain help. The Precautionists have welcomed them, but we believe they are planning something dire for the humans. A great sacrifice was made to send me here to find you.”
“What can we do?” Kellen asked.
“We need you to act as intermediaries between us and these humans. We must convince them not to cooperate with the Precautionists. If they continue down that path, they’ll trigger eons more war between your race and the Hexi.”
Chronicler moved to the tunnel entrance and panned the canyon with its sensors. It rolled back inside and beckoned them closer, lowered its voice to a whisper. “We think there is something else beyond opening the gate and bringing this news about Earth that you, the Four, were supposed to do. Some of us think you may be key to reactivating First.”
Chapter 24 – The City
“IFD post-run checks complete. All systems green,” Alvares said from Command.
“Building ephemeris now,” Janik said. A pause. Sir, this can’t be right. We’re not in a system. Nearest star is fourteen light years. There’s nothing on the heading Contemplator gave us.”
Xin and Omeri turned to Gavin. Sheemi waited to see what their senior scientist would say.
“Doctor Na,” Ciib said, “Does our chine guest have anything to say?”
“Unfortunately, Translocator doesn’t speak our language, Captain,” Gavin said. “Only a data-rich code meant for direct commands I’ve not yet deciphered.”
“What are our options then, Doctor?”
Gavin frowned. “I suggest we proceed as if we were in a system. Broadcast the coded transmission given to us by Contemplator, advance, and see what we find.”
Sheemi held her breath. Would they really advance into nothing? What else could they do? Going home empty-handed wasn’t an option.
“All right, Doctor Na,” Ciib said finally. “Janik, ready main engines.”
“Ready.”
“Forward up to delta-dot plus two-fifty k, 1.4 g.”
Dauntless lurched forward as the main engines came to life. An hour passed, then two, and still they crept ahead at half maximum acceleration. Without the usual constraint of extreme acceleration, the crew was free to move about. Sheemi made her way to the cupola. The mod was so crowded she couldn’t enter. People were talking quietly. She stood on tiptoes, trying to catch a glimpse out the windows to see.
“Nothing,” someone else said. “There’s nothing here.”
Another hour passed. People drifted away. Had they come all this way for nothing? Looking out, Sheemi saw only the tiny points of distant stars. She turned from one window to the next, but none revealed even a sun or planets. They had arrived in empty space.
She couldn’t understand it. Had Contemplator gone mad? Had it sent them to the wrong place intentionally? Or did it have the wrong coordinates?
“N-layer turbulence at dec plus four ten thirteen-point-one, RA seven fifty-two forty-one, delta point-zero-zero-three AU.”
Sheemi looked out in time to see the dark void peel back, streaming currents of light bending and falling past them as if a celestial curtain was being drawn aside, the edge of nothing left behind as Dauntless proceeded into space Sheemi could not immediately comprehend. Those still in the cupola turned to the windows, equipment dropping from their hands.
A glittering array of objects swam around them in a slow dance amid the light of so many suns. In every direction she turned, a vast clockwork of mystery objects moved according to different orbits, trajectories, and speeds, a few so close she could see their complex shapes scattering light along their turning edges.
Sheemi ran back to the lab.
Xin and Gavin watched through the scopes. Omeri was deep in virt.
“Sheemi, you see that blue-white star there?” Gavin asked, more excited than she’d ever seen him. “And the other there?”
She nodded.
“They’re a binary pair, orbiting perpendicular to the ecliptic. The four white stars share a single orbit.”
She didn’t understand.
Xin glanced back at her. “This could never happen on its own. Stellar systems don’t form that way. It means they built this. They scooped up six stars and made their own system—then somehow bent back space, hid it behind curtains of nothing.”
Sheemi could think of nothing to say. Words seemed insufficient.
“We’ve done it, everyone,” Ciib said, addressing the crew. “Goddamn, we did it. All of you made this happen, and I’m proud of each one of you.”
“Sir,” Janik said, “Three bogeys inbound. They’re pulling over a thousand g’s, sir. ETA fifteen minutes.”
“Cut the main engine,” Ciib said, “but keep her powered up.”
“What do we do when they get here, Doctor Na?”
“Hold,” Gavin advised. “I believe they will not harm us, but to be sure, we should broadcast our peaceful intentions. I’ll provide a signal we can transmit by encoded laser.”
“Understood.”
Gavin busied himself preparing the message.
As Dauntless drifted, Sheemi waited anxiously. How would they be received?
“Inbound bogeys decelerating,” Janik said.
“Good, good,” Gavin said. “We’d have died by now if they felt threatened. Of course, why would they be? Our technology is clearly inferior, almost primitive, I’m sure. We pose no threat.”
“They wouldn’t harm their children, Gavin,” Meszaros said.
“Captain, our chine guest, Translocator, has disengaged.”
“What?”
“It’s approaching the bogeys.”
“We may not need my message after all,” Gavin said.
“We’re getting laser flash,” Trediakovsky said. “They may be targeting us.”
“Feed me the laser readings,” Gavin said. “It’s probably a message of some kind.” Gavin set to work as the laser data came in. “We’re to follow them. We need to signal an acknowledgement. Lieutenant Trediakovsky, can you send this packet using our ranging lasers?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Please do so now.”
“Done.”
“They’re moving away,” Janik said. “They’re accelerating towards the system center.”
“Have we detected anything at that location?” Ciib asked.
“Yes, a fairly large object, Captain,” Omeri said.
“Fairly large?”
“Well, not moon-sized, but large.”
“Alvares, set a course to take us there,” Ciib commanded.
“Yes, sir,” Alvares said. “Looks like thirty hours high-g, 14 at max speed, thirty hours of deceleration. ETA three days.”
“Ready main engines.”
#
With each new high-g leg, Sheemi felt more and more as if she was slipping into the same dream. She dropped into virt at first, but none of the fictives held her attention. She watched old 2-D historicals, war after war, invasions and inventions and culture clashes. After the first ten hours, she switched over to music and fell into semi-consciousness. Time blurred.
When the last leg ended, Sheemi joined most of the crew in the cupola as their destination grew
closer. Looking down along Dauntless’ axle, past the drogue sphere, Sheemi saw a vast cylinder directly in their path, silhouetted by the suns behind it. It spun fast enough she could see features shift if she watched closely.
“How big is it?” Ciib asked.
“Sir, laser measurements confirm the cylinder is over thirty-seven kilometers long. Radius is over five kilometers,” Trediakovsky said.
As they approached, the cylinder’s size became increasingly apparent. Black as night, the cylinder stood out as an absence of stars, a void. Only as they closed their distance to it did Sheemi notice starlight caught on its edges and something shining within the cylinder itself. Long openings traversed the length of it, through which flashes of light caught her eyes as it turned. The cylinder’s nearer, disc-shaped base came into view, bristling with long, parallel structures.
As they got closer, the disc eclipsed their view, the structures extending outward, encrusted with ships or chines. They entered a forest of docks. The cylinder itself could no longer be seen, as the disc filled their view.
Dauntless slowed, falling toward a vacant dock, a hollow structure of metallic beams with chines moving along its length.
“They’re drawing us in remotely,” Alvares said. “Without touching the ship.”
“Any idea how they’re doing that, doctors?” Ciib asked.
“I might have some guesses,” Omeri said, “but they’d only be guesses.”
They came to a stop, the great disc dominating their view, one vast wall with their ship perched against it like an insect on a centurion tree. Up close, Sheemi could see that the disc itself was perforated with a dense network of openings through which traffic flowed. Their dock ended at the disc and an airlock tens of meters across. She tried to imagine what it had been built to accommodate.
“Everyone to Command in five minutes,” Mertik said.
Sheemi reluctantly unglued herself from the cupola windows and followed the others into the Command mod. Everyone looked tired but happy.
“We’ve arrived at the City of the Six Suns,” Gavin said. “According to Contemplator’s description, this is the heart of the Array.”
The Farthest City Page 21
