The Space Opera Megapack: 20 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Tales

by John W. Campbell

  Right now, on top of all her other fears about data contamination and the illicit tweaking of their search for evidence of the Mistake, the Before Michaela Cannon was very much in a mood to twit the Navisparliament through its only representative in local space, Third Rectification.

  Lots of birds to be slain with this particular stone, she thought with satisfaction.

  “Any further questions?” she asked the shipmind.

  After a long pause, doubtless purely for dramatic effect, the starship responded, “Why?”

  “To test some theories.” As an answer, it had the advantage of being both utterly true and essentially meaningless. In hopes of nudging the shipmind’s thoughts in another direction, she added: “You’ve been around human beings for centuries. You know perfectly well how profound our need for see-and-touch is.”

  “Monkey intuition.”

  Which reminded her of another ancient joke from her childhood. “That’s all we really are in this universe. Monkeys with a space program.”

  “There is more to life than curiosity.” Now the shipmind almost sounded prim.

  Cannon felt the stirrings of anger. “None of you remember the Mistake. None of you were there. Not even Uncial. Therefore you do not sufficiently fear its return.”

  “No one remembers the Mistake but you Befores.”

  “And you wonder why I keep such close control of Sword and Arm? How much is left from before, besides me and my kind?” It was an exaggeration to call the Befores a kind—unlike the shipminds, they’d didn’t assert the sort of group identity that might have solidified their social power, as well as helping protect them from themselves and each other.

  “The species itself. And your children.”

  “You and your fellow hulls.” Did the shipminds believe they had transcended their progenitors? It wouldn’t be a difficult argument to make.

  “We are not hulls,” Third Rectification said, its voice neutral now in what would have been a signal of anger among human beings. “We are shipminds.”

  Cannon puffed air, a sort of focused sigh. ‘Hull’ was an insult. Sword and Arm was a hull, but no spark of consciousness glimmered within. In-system freighters and yachts and warships were hulls.

  It was like calling a human being a dummy, in the literalmost sense of the word. “I apologize. I was wrong to use that word. The stress of our breakthroughs has me far more keyed up.”

  “You are Uncial’s last captain. I can only forgive you.”

  Cannon sat in silence a while, staring at her logistics display and wondering if she had been anyone other than Uncial’s last captain whether she would have survived this long. And by extension, was she condemning Lieutenant Shinka by bringing the woman in on this problem?

  Shipminds dissembled constantly, in the fashion of politicians and portmasters. But cooking the raw data, mission critical data at the heart of a project so important as this one… That was a whole new kind of rebellion.

  Or attack.

  Cannon returned to her cabin to make her final preparations for retreat to her hull. For the thousandth time, she blessed all the gods and little fishes that Sword and Arm was hers and hers alone.

  If the ancient starship were a person, it would be about the hundredth-oldest person in human space. Less than two hundred Befores remained alive, none having been created since the Mistake for a variety of reasons—lack of interest on the part of the existing Befores being first on the list of those reasons, even ahead of issues of medical technology.

  The Before Michaela Cannon paced the short, cramped passageways of her tiny kingdom. Sword and Arm might not be the only personally-owned starship in human space, but offhand Cannon couldn’t name another one. Certainly the Ekumen had never tried to reclaim it from her in the wake of the Polyphemus mutiny. The handful of other threadneedle drive ships she knew of were all in the hands of museums, historical societies or governments. The rare post-Mistake relativistic starships fell in the same category, or functioned as assets of certain major corporations.

  In here, she was almost back in the Polity days. Even down to details like the quality and materials for the interior finishout.

  In here, the weight of history seemed part of the fabric of the reality that surrounded her, rather than a tangled mass dragging at her thoughts, her feelings, her soul.

  In here, she was safe. At least for a little while.

  In here, was, well, here.

  Cannon lowered herself into the pilot’s crash couch and closed her eyes. How many ships had she commanded? How bridges had she stood on since being rescued after the Mistake? 9-Rossiter had at least not descended into rank barbarism as some places had. A small, fairly homogenous population, the locals had managed to develop wind and water power in their first generation post-Mistake.

  With considerable help from her, of course. She’d been a social engineer and a cultural architect back in the Polity days. Building worlds had actually been her specialty. Not military adventurism and exploration. Generally her projects were colony start-ups with a solid technology package behind them. She’d mostly designed governing processes and residential living standards. Electrical systems hadn’t exactly been her cup of whiskey in those pre-Mistake days. A generation post-Mistake on 9-Rossiter, with all the textbooks fried along with the rest of the electronic systems, Cannon had been the only one who knew anything whatsoever.

  All the struggle, the combat, the command time—that had come later on. Lessons she’d never meant to learn. Struggles she’d never thought to take on.

  Losses, bitter losses, that no one had deserved. Least of all those who’d fallen by the wayside.

  She felt as if she only opened her eyes, she’d see all of time stretched behind her. All those starship bridges. All those dying women and men, killed by decisions good and bad. In the heat of battle, by dark of night, or ensconced in a warm, lighted room surrounded by friends—it didn’t matter how you died, once you were dead.

  Her sense of what was gone from her rose like the inexorable tide. Flooding her heart, flooding her thoughts, a breaking dam of grief and memory and regret. Cannon’s fingers found her face and pressed tight against her eyes, as if holding back the tears, as if turning them inward could somehow delay the reckoning. She could hear Raisa giggling, smell Peridot after a hard workout, feel the light touch on her shoulder of the Before Fellowes Bundy, lost with Uncial at the Battle of Wirtanen B. All her dead crowded close, each one of the messengers of her regrets, until Cannon felt trapped, constrained, pressed ever tighter. She tried to cry out but her voice would not come. She’d lost it somewhere down the centuries. She’d—

  “Ma’am…?” Fingers gripped her arm.

  The Before Michaela Cannon stifled a shriek, her eyes flying open as she was shocked out of the fugue. Lieutenant Shinka stood before, concern writ large upon the woman’s face.

  “Captain. Um… Before. Are you all right?”

  Of course I’m not all right, girl. Don’t you know incipient temporal psychosis when you see it? “I am fine, Lieutenant,” she managed, in a voice that wouldn’t have convinced a child. “Th-thank you for your concern.” Cannon found herself shivering uncontrollably. An early stage of shock. She’d lost two decades to temporal psychosis in the early 500’s post-Mistake. The Ekumen had saved her then, before they’d parted ways once more.

  Cannon was also acutely aware that she was one of the very few Befores to enter full-blown temporal psychosis and recover. No one had ever been able to explain why or how. She was the baseline, after all.

  Shinka sensibly shut up and bustled about the bridge. The Lieutenant swiftly located a thermal blanket and placed it over Cannon’s shoulders, then dialed up the ambient temperature another few degrees. After a long, careful glance she carried her gear bags aft.

  No cabin assignments had been discussed, but at this point, Cannon found she could not summon the will to care. There were two of them aboard, while the ship slept eight in three cabins. It wasn’t like they wo
uldn’t have privacy.

  By the time Shinka returned to the bridge with a certain amount of ostentatious rattling and throat-clearing, Cannon had control of herself once more. She knew better than to pretend the fugue had not taken place. And it would be impossible to order the Lieutenant to forget what she’d seen. No normal human being could obey something like that, let alone any pathological inquisitive like Shinka with the psych profile to be aboard Third Rectification on this mission.

  Unquestioning obedience to authority had not been a trait with a high selection value. Not in this crew.

  “Ah… Lieutenant…”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  Cannon was also getting rather weary of military discipline. “Call me Michaela, please. At least while we’re aboard Sword and Arm.” She couldn’t remember when she’d last invited that much familiarity. Any time in the most recent century, even?

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  That brought a smile. “Right. Look.” She found herself wringing her hands, and forced that to a stop. “Are you familiar with the physiology and, uh, psychology of Befores?”

  “I read up when I considered applying for this mission, yes.” Shinka was being guarded but not defensive.

  Good.

  “Back around the year 525, I was overtaken by temporal psychosis.” She took a deep breath. “I lost two decades to the condition.”

  “That’s actually in the public record, ma’am.”

  Of course it was. Most of the surviving Befores led their lives in public. There weren’t a lot of alternatives, in truth, given the attention focused upon them by the Imperium and its various significant constituencies.

  “Well, yes.”

  “Are you experiencing temporal psychosis now, ma’am?”

  “Hell, no,” Cannon growled. “I’m sorry. It’s difficult to discuss. There’s a subclinical manifestation that occurs as fugue states.” No need to elaborate that the fugue states were a direct precursor to the full-blown condition. She refused to think of it as an illness.

  “How long have these been going on?” Shinka glanced around the cabin, clearly wondering if she was fit to con Sword and Arm should Cannon surrender to another bout of the condition.

  “This is my first on our current voyage. They have come and gone over the centuries.” Not exactly true, but uncheckable and suitably edited for the needs of the current situation. “I wouldn’t worry too much, Lieutenant, but if you fear I’m drifting off, simply say my name firmly.”

  “And if you don’t respond?”

  “Then shake me awake. Like you just did.” Cannon’s hands had finally stopped trembling. She managed to fold the thermal blanket without making a hash of either the process or the subsequent little foil pillow. “Let’s do our preflights, shall we?”

  Shipmind, Third Rectification {58 pairs}

  The world is seen by fingers of light, radio, microwave, and stranger enemies. Even so, blue is blue and black is black, and the empty sky can echo to an ancient and lonely mechanical mind every bit as surely as it does to a lost bit of monkey meat cut off from their tribe. A ship drops away like a projectile launched from vengeful orbit upon a sleeping planet.

  Color is a subjective experience compounded of wavelengths of light and the biochemical interpolation of an animal system. Drive flare can wash out even the discerning mechanical eye, leaving contrails of light like ghosts of starships past, never to return. A commander departs, crossing a bridge of failed trust until everything is hollow.

  Shipmind considered the conversations she had overheard. The Before had swept her own ship and gear very carefully indeed, but Cannon had not thought to sweep Lieutenant Shinka and her gear. Or possibly had not bothered. It never paid to underestimate the subtlety and foresight of those ancient humans.

  She had evidence of betrayal. Policy and procedure said to bring those to Go-Captain Alvarez, but then evidence of Third Rectification’s own recent acts might be misinterpreted. Some things were never meant to be shared.

  At times like this, as the tiny, ancient starship skittered away, the ship regretted the lack of weapons imposed upon them all. Certain solutions would have been very simple indeed.

  The Before Michaela Cannon, aboard Sword and Arm

  They followed an elliptical orbit through the messy, crowded solar system. Space, even when messy and crowded, was of course still overwhelmingly empty, but the wise pilot kept a careful watch in these neighborhoods.

  There was a turbulent, primal beauty to locations like this.

  “It’s like staring at a waterfall,” Cannon said. “Endlessly fractal.”

  Shinka glanced away from the data feeds hovering in front of her on virtual displays. They were running survey sweeps and comparing the results to what had been obtained by Third Rectification. Looking for another round of data jiggery, in short. “Not too many of those where I grew up,” she said.

  “Oh, right. Desert.” Cannon laughed softly. She was so much more relaxed away from Third Rectification. “I grew up in Nebraska. Not so many waterfalls there, either.”

  “Wasn’t Nebraska in the Americas? I always thought it rained a lot.”

  “One of the United States, in fact. But not so much elevation variation. Have to have a cliff and flowing water to have a waterfall.” She added after a moment. “It didn’t rain there so much, anyway, by the time I’d grown up. The climate crash of the 2100s very nearly made a desert out of us, too, in that century.”

  “Hmmm.”

  Cannon tore herself away from the distraction of memory. “Still no sign of tampering?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I’m not sure if I’m happy about that or not.”

  “Isn’t much to be happy about here, ma’am.” Shinka glanced at the virtual display, then waved her dataflow to a stop. “What are we afraid of?”

  That question gave Cannon pause. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Well, yes. I mean, that the shipminds are lying to us is pretty frightening. It’s not like we just look out the windows when they’re traveling. Everything we know is mediated through them.”

  “Precisely,” Cannon said.

  “But there’s more. Isn’t there?”

  She went for the Socratic method. Ask an open question and invite the answer. “Which would be…?”

  Shinka chose her words with obvious care. “Well, it’s got to be our mission. Looking for evidence of the origins of the Mistake. Third Rectification buggered the scan data on that artefact, after all.”

  Cannon nodded, trying to encourage. This reflected her basic thinking, but it never hurt to check. Especially given her current mental state. “So what are we afraid of?”

  “Well, a cover-up of the Mistake evidence.” Shinka’s expression grew incredibly uncomfortable before she burst out with, “But why? It doesn’t make any sense. The first shipmind didn’t emerge until almost two hundred years after the Mistake. It’s not like they’re covering up some act of treason. The ships weren’t there!”

  “Precisely my problem,” Cannon said. “Why cover up something you had nothing to do with in the very first place? I don’t see what the Navisparliament possibly has to gain from such a profound breach of trust as this. What could they possibly be hiding?”

  Horror dawned on the Lieutenant’s face. “Could they possibly be colluding with the aliens to bring about a second Mistake?”

  Cannon leaned toward the other woman. “Or worse… could the ships possibly be colluding with the aliens to prevent a second Mistake? What if simply by investigating this we’re blowing their operational security on what would be one of the biggest, deepest black ops in human history?”

  “What humans?” Shinka slammed her fist into the control panel. “Starships negotiating with aliens isn’t in human history.”

  “If that’s what’s happening,” Cannon said, her excitement subsiding.

  “Either way, it makes a sick kind of sense.” Shinka traced her finger on the dark glass surface. “Either way, it
’s scary as hell.”

  “Which is why we’re kiting around out here by ourselves, hiding from the shipmind and playing nosy buggers with the survey on this system. Because if we can prove that Third Rectification buggered the data…”

  “…we’ll have a worse mystery than we have now,” Shinka concluded. She stared at Cannon for a little while. “Do you always think like this? Is this what your world is like?”

  Worse, much worse, Cannon thought, but did not say. Instead: “Honey, after two thousand years, every time I think I’ve seen it all, I’m still wrong.”

  “I’ve always wanted to ask one of you. What’s the hardest part about living so long? Is it this… sideways thinking?”

  “No.” Cannon stared at her own data flows, not meeting Shinka’s eye. “It’s when you realize you know far more dead people than you will ever again know among the living.”

  Two days later, Shinka found a discontinuity in the data. What they had been searching for.

  “Look here,” she told Cannon, calling up feeds from Third Rectification alongside the sensor packages aboard Sword and Arm. The little starship didn’t have nearly the resolution or available sensor suites of the paired drive ship, but they could still check baselines.

  Cannon stepped over and stared at the screens. Immersive technology might have been more, well, immersive, but that wasn’t an option aboard this vessel.

  “This system is classed as a binary, but there’s a brown dwarf companion, out at about Kuiper distances. 260 light-minutes or so from the barycenter of this system. Way beyond our current orbital track.”

  “Uh huh.” Brown dwarfs were the cosmic equivalent of cockroaches—everywhere underfoot and often in the way. Most were not optically active, but they still had sufficient mass, and usually enough surface temperature, to factor into one’s plotting around the outer marches of any solar system much beyond the Goldilocks zone.