Event Horizon (Hellgate)

by Mel Keegan

  From upstairs Tor’s voice bellowed for Dario, and Dario shouted from one of the labs on the basement level. They were trying to find oddments misplaced long ago, when the whole community scrambled to evacuate. Mark appeared at the arched doorway where the dining room opened onto the lounge with the redwood floors and emerald rugs. He was working with a pair of handies, and wore a pained expression at the noise.

  “Something’s wrong with the house comm system?” Alexis Rusch’s voice asked from the winged armchair by the hearth, where the fire might have been gas fed, but it was bright, warm.

  “As long as they’ve been together,” Mark said resignedly, “they don’t use it. They shout.”

  Roy Arlott snorted a laugh. “Shouting’s more fun. Besides, Leon’s up there somewhere. He’ll tell Tor to stow in, in the interests of his eardrums. Or mine,” he added. He was sitting on the rug by the hearth, leafing through an ancient, very precious book.

  Marin knew the volume well. It was over a century old, a visual catalog of the relics, art, artifacts, uncovered in the Eternal City on Saraine. Over 600 pages of heavy plastex were printed in meticulously balanced color, with closeup images of any accessible Resalq texts and the best-guess translations of the day. Roy was unimpressed.

  “These guys,” he was saying as Marin found a chair and lifted his feet up before the fire to thaw, “are way wide of the mark.”

  “And they wouldn’t be corrected,” Mark said pragmatically. “It’s human nature, I suppose – Resalq nature, too. When you’ve worked a whole lifetime on a project, you can’t bear some newcomer casually strolling in and telling you the whole foundation your work is based on is shaky.”

  “Where did they dream up this guff?” Arlott turned the book to show him an image, a wall painting incorporating an original memorial text. “This eulogy is beautiful. The translation is ghastly. Listen to this, Curtis. ‘Where the fires of night are burning bright, thou shalt sing to the glories of yore, And the future days of thy children’s grace shall your epitaph be evermore.’ That’s horrible. That’s sheer, unadulterated goo.”

  Even the contemporary written Resalq language defeated Marin; the archaic form was little more than beautiful, abstract patterns. He scanned over the image of a young couple, killed in an accident. The memorial painting concealed the niche where their ashes were interred, in what had been a memory garden when the Eternal City thronged with Resalq.

  “So what’s it actually say?” he asked.

  “It says,” Arlott mused, working over the script, “and correct me if I’m wrong, Mark … ‘May the stars light your way as you return to your forefathers, and may your children carry your memory and name into a bright future.’” He looked up at Mark. “Close?”

  “That’s a good literal translation,” Mark agreed. “The poetic form is a little more florid. ‘The stars light us home, where equeros lie dreaming, while our children race onward, their future is gleaming.’” He tilted his head to see the book, the painting. “The old language is very difficult. The common term for ‘your children’ was compounded of older words involving the bearers of names, the carriers of memory. I can quite understand how human linguists had, and still have, enormous problems with it. Contemporary Resalq are speaking it less and less often. Some,” he added, “are speaking Slingo preferentially, and a handful don’t speak a word of the mother tongue.”

  Dario and Tor continued to hold a conversation from one end of the house to the other, but Marin was indulgent. They were packing what they had left before, and no one knew when they would be back. They would be on the Wastrel until the Lai’a project was complete, after which plans became sketchy.

  The smell of hot bread and fresh coffee preceded Travers into the lounge, and Marin looked up the moment before a tray landed on his lap. The bread was roughly torn, right out of the oven, with preserves and butter on the side rather than the salt-pickled plums and horseradish the Resalq would have chosen for breakfast. Marin smiled his thanks, and with a pleasured groan Travers settled at his feet on the rug.

  Vidal and Shapiro had fallen quiet, and he heard the muted sounds of the threedee. They were watching CNS, and Curtis caught the thread of it without actually listening. Twenty worlds were applying for membership in the Commonwealth, some halfway back through the Middle Heavens, others over the frontier, in what was technically Freespace.

  “It’s starting,” Travers said quietly. He was watching the fire, content to laze the morning away. “We knew worlds everywhere would come in for trade deals and safety in numbers as soon as the Confederacy was thrown out.”

  “There’s going to be a whole lot more worlds signatory to the Commonwealth charter than belonging to the Confederacy,” Shapiro said in a voice rich with satisfaction. “The Confederacy isn’t going to like it, but they’ll have to play nice now. They’re outnumbered, as well as outgunned. You know Chandra Liang managed to talk at least a couple of their minor dignitaries to the conference table?”

  Marin had heard the news, but was skeptical. “The way I heard it, it turned out to be just a couple of trade representatives. Apparently, there’s a flow of certain rare materials the Confederacy just can’t do without, and it’s stopped. They’re willing to do deals via the backdoor to get it started again. It’s closer to shonky business protocol than peace talks.”

  “Still,” Shapiro mused, “it’s a place to start. They’re talking. If raw materials are going in one direction, Confederate credits are coming in the other. A dialog is open, they’re ready to pay for what they want. A year ago, all they wanted to do was batter us senseless and take anything they needed. You don’t think it’s an enormous stride forward, Curtis?”

  “When you put it like that,” Marin admitted, “I suppose it is.”

  “Patience,” Mark counselled. “It’s supposed to be a virtue. Give it another year, and these backdoor deals will have turned into a full-blown trade agreement. Ten years, and people will have accepted the fact the colonials refused to play the Confederate game any longer. Twenty years, and a whole generation of homeworlds people will have grown up, to whom the Deep Sky Commonwealth was always there. We’ll just be part of the landscape – and a highly exotic part, at that.”

  “Exotic?” Travers angled a glance up at him. “Us?”

  “When the Veldn arrive,” Mark said thoughtfully, “it ought to be safe for the Resalq to show our faces. We’re so much like humans, at least superficially, we’ll be quite accepted as almost normal. In the light of what we know of the other intelligent alien species, embrace the term! Then, the Zunshu data will be published very soon. There’s four intelligent species in our cosmos, Neil, of which humans and Resalq are similar enough to be so normal, we’re boring. The Zunshu, the Veldn – now, these are alien races! Place yourself in the position of a brilliant youngster growing up on Earth or Mars. The study of the universe is your passion. You dream about communicating with alien minds. This is the cosmos we live in, you and I. Those young minds will be coming out here to find us in ten or twenty years, and the Confederacy can only suffer for what was once known as a ‘brain drain’.”

  He made a good point, and Marin was fascinated to see that future become reality. “The Resalq are coming out, are they? When?”

  “Soon enough,” Mark said evasively. “This is one of many things we need to talk about – as of late this evening, local time, we’re on our way to rendezvous with the Freyana. It’s the oddest thing – Joss can’t get a squeak out of it. There’s been no data from the ship in the last ten days, though the big colony transmitters are still working. If they had an emergency, we’d know about it. But the Freyana itself has gone dark. Or has gone.”

  “Which is reason enough to investigate,” Rusch judged.

  “Oh, yes. Emil Kulich has been itching to chase down the Raishenne, see if he can find the old Resalq colony ship that vanished without trace. And I’m fully aware the Raishenne was his base ship, at the time he and Midani were trapped inside the Kjorin stasis cham
ber, so I’m just hoping Emil hasn’t taken the Freyana and gone hunting.

  “That ship ought to be standing by the colony! If he’s gone hunting, I’ll carve a slice off him. The Freyana is not his ship. He was given command of it, loaned it, specifically to found a new colony, but it’s a piece of history in its own right, and so precious, he’s not going to take it out gallivanting! And in any case,” Mark added as he adjusted the gas jets and the fire burned a little lower, “we’re headed to the new world to offload the stasis chambers. Five Zunshu stasis chambers … and whatever is inside them.”

  As he finished, Dario and Tor arrived from the stairs. They plunked down onto the couch beneath the window, where the blinds were open to the blue sky, and great flurries of snow were plucked off the trees by the rising wind. “The stasis chambers,” Dario grumbled. “I’m having bloody nightmares about them.”

  Marin was surprised. “I thought you got the control codes from the Veldn, since the Zunshu data was patchy.”

  “Oh, we have the codes,” Dario said fatalistically. “The problem isn’t the codes, it’s the hardware. These stasis chambers are not just old, they’re ancient. They’re also neglected, and if you take surface readings off the event horizons, you break out in a sweat. You looked at the stuff I sent you, Mark?”

  His expression had darkened. “I looked. It seems these chambers have never been serviced, and like the one on Ulrand, as you said, they’re in quite poor condition.” His brows arched thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t like to even try opening them without a thorough study; and when I did make the attempt, it would have to be in controlled conditions on a world where an explosion like the El Khouri event wouldn’t cause havoc within a living biosphere.”

  “Damn, that’s a nasty job,” Vidal observed.

  “And a long one,” Tor said acidly. “Whoever takes this assignment is going to be nailed to the lab for months, more likely years.”

  “You?” Travers wondered.

  For a long moment both Dario and Tor hesitated. “I dunno,” Dario said then. “For a start, we don’t know how welcome we’re going to be in the Resalq community, the new colony. There’s a lot of old fogeys there, to whom Emil Kulich is the ultimate, the best, the icon. Me and Tor? Mongrels, remember. Tor and Emil only ever fought. Sometimes it was all I could do to stop it coming to blows.”

  “Now, dump us down in the middle of a whole colony full of these old farts,” Tor growled, “and it’ll be blood, and it won’t take long.”

  Mark held up both hands. “Why don’t you just wait and see? All we’re doing on this assignment is offloading the stasis chambers. Early data says the new colony world has three moons. Pick one. We’ll put down a small installation, same as the camp on Kjorin, settle the stasis chambers, and present the science team with the entire data load we patched together from the Zunshu AI and the Veldn. This one’s not ours to lose sleep over, Dario – not,” he added, “unless you actually want to be there, sweating blood over it.”

  “Running the risks, like El Khouri,” Tor added. “Putting up with morons like Emil Kulich. Trying not to punch the nose right off his nasty face.” He glared sidelong at Dario. “I miss Sark. I miss the nightlife.”

  “You want to go out on the town?” Vidal offered. ”I’ve got to buzz over to Sark myself. There’s … something I need. You want to ride over in the Capricorn?”

  “Do we?” Tor sat up and looked from Dario to Mark and back.

  “Go, by all means,” Mark told him. “I’ve no desire to have my eardrums ruptured in some club! I’ll see you back on the Wastrel. The only project I have time for right now is Lai’a.”

  “I could say the same,” Dario sighed. “I guess we could go to Sark.”

  “Stores, malls, cinema,” Tor said with unbridled glee. “Hey, Curtis, Neil, anything you want from the big smoke?”

  Marin could think of nothing, and merely shook his head. He watched as Tor bounded back upstairs to change, and Dario groaned. Vidal chuckled as he fetched a black leather jacket from the closet by the front door, and shrugged into it. “I guess I’ll see you back on the Wastrel,” he said, “unless you want to wait here. We’ll swing back to Riga when Tor’s had enough.”

  “Do that,” Mark told him. “I could send for the Trofeo, but since you’re already down here … and incidentally, don’t let Tor overdo it. He’s not as strong as he thinks he is. Neither are you, Michael.”

  “I know my limitations.” Vidal sobered fast. “This is the first time Bill Grant’s letting me out on my own, and I’ve had my orders. No booze, no smokes, no junk food, and I keep one eye on my chrono.” He patted his pocket. “I have a hypogun in here, preloaded. He’s trusting me to keep up with the schedule and the truth is, if I don’t, I feel like shit.” He gave Dario a thoughtful look. “You want me to keep an eye on Tor?”

  “He might listen to you,” Dario sighed. “Me, he ignores.”

  “Then, I guess I’ll keep an eye on Tor,” Vidal agreed. The blue eyes sparkled as he gave Travers a wink. “See you later, kid.” He took Mark’s hand for a moment on the way by. “I’ll go preflight the Capricorn. Anything you want from Sark, Mahak?”

  But Mark only touched Vidal’s face with curious gentleness, outlining the old Delta Dragons tattoo. “Just yourself, safe and well. I talked to Richard an hour ago. We’re shipping out at around midnight, local time, so don’t be late.”

  The Capricorn was lifting on blustering repulsion minutes later, raising a miniature snowstorm in the street, when Marin asked, “What’s the situation with the Freyana?”

  “We honestly don’t know,” Mark admitted. “She’s just gone dark, and though the colony transmitters are still running, they don’t mention her.”

  “You’re worried for the colony itself?” Travers hazarded. “Maybe something that didn’t show up on preliminary scans just jumped up and bit them?”

  “It’s not impossible.” Mark sighed. “And there’s not one damned thing we can do about it till we get there.”

  “How long?” Marin knew little about the new world, only that the Aenestra had charted it, surveyed it.

  “Twelve days or so.” Mark adjusted the gas jets again. “Give or take, at the best speed the Wastrel can maintain.”

  “Two weeks?” Travers demanded. “That’s …” Hands on Marin’s knees, he got to his feet.

  “You don’t have to come along,” Mark said reasonably. “You could stay right here on Borushek. House sit,” he suggested. “Enjoy this property. Keep the Trofeo, live the quiet life till we get back in a month or so.”

  The quiet life? Marin actually laughed. The novelty of having nothing to do and all day to do it in would wear off in a few days, and Travers would be chafing at the inactivity. Three weeks on the Wastrel put him back in the bosom of a salvage crew, with the science team unraveling the mystery of Lai’a on one hand, and the fascination of a new world ahead – a world where the colony ship had gone dark and the big groundside transmitters were conveying oddly inadequate information.

  “We’ll be on the Wastrel,” Curtis said easily. “I just hadn’t realized this new world of theirs was so far out.”

  “Carahne.” Mark gestured in what might well have been the direction of the Mare Aenestra. “That’s the name they’re suggesting. It has to be put to a community vote, of course, but Carahne has a nice ring to it.”

  “It means something?” Travers wondered.

  “In the old language it means beginning,” Marin nodded slowly.

  “And particularly the start of something new,” Arlott added. “It’s a good name.”

  “It’s an excellent name,” Mark agreed, “and from the data we’ve been seeing, passed back by the colony transmitters, the world is a jewel, one of the very few that need so little terraforming, you can put down your roots while the machinery runs in the background.”

  “So they’ll be staying there.” Travers looked into the fire, and nodded toward the street, the town. “And Riga?”

  “
Will drowse while it decays back into the mountains,” Mark said regretfully. “And a few of us will be sad. We built this place when Sark was not much more than a string of villages ranged around the spaceport. This house has been as much my home as the house on Saraine, or the Carellan, for a long time.”

  “Well, damn.” A rush of emotion caught Marin by surprise. “All things end, Mark. All things change.”

  “Old Chinese proverb,” Alexis Rusch offered. “The only thing that never changes is that everything always changes.”

  “Very wise, these old Chinese,” Travers said with the merest hint of cynicism. “So we’re just on Borushek for today, and then gone?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Mark turned his back on the fire, let it warm him. “Like any itinerants, we go where the work is! First to Carahne – and I’ll not be wasting my time on the way there. I’ve a rudimentary AI to configure before we can run the reengineered virus, see if we can heal and reboot the version of Lai’a that went to war with us. Once we’ve ascertained what’s become of the Freyana and offloaded cargo, set up a research facility, it’s on to Saraine, and then back to Alshie’nya. Get Lai’a put back together – and that’s the beginning of the job ahead of us. If Lai’a doesn’t reboot cleanly, it’s going to be interesting, and we’ve no time to waste in dickering.”

  They would contract the Harlequin, possibly the Mako, perhaps other ships, to seed the comm buoys into both sides of the frontier, Marin thought, while they brought a copy of Lai’a online and put it through the requisite thousand hours of testing. At the same time they must recruit a science team for Zunshu 161-D, drawing on the best specialists from the Deep Sky labs, and from Carahne. The first step was to design and build a science platform from which to study the planet. The work never ended, and completion on one project spelled the beginning of two others.

  Conversation wound down into desultory terms while the sky darkened with the incoming weather front. Marin stood at the wide windows in the early afternoon, watching Riga settle back down, as if the town had just shaken itself for a few moments and was subsiding back into a hibernation that could last for decades, or forever. Travers was arguing amiably with Leon and Roy over a veeree game; Mark and Rusch had gone down to the labs to putter, and the highband surprised Marin out of a reverie.