Sunborn

by Jeffrey Carver

  “I am offering to step down, on a trial basis, from what we will for the sake of argument call command,” said the robot, “and function instead as your advisor and executive officer. The four of you will make the decisions, and I will help you carry them out.”

  “Rrrm, that sounds...well...” Ik rubbed the opposing thumbs of both hands together for a moment, studying them. Then he looked up. “What do you mean, trial basis?”

  Jeaves shifted his gaze to take each of them in. “It means, if it doesn’t work out—if, for example, you squabble among yourselves, because I have no basis on which to assign command to just one of you—or if you make decisions that are clearly antithetical to the mission—then my transfer of authority will expire. And the shipboard AI will once more recognize my command authority.”

  “So-o-o,” Bandicut said, “it’s more of a pretend change of authority. You’re going to let us play-act, and see how you like our acting. And if we’re good, we get to keep play-acting. Is that it?”

  “No—no—you will make the decisions. And if it works out, you will stay in command. I really am hopeful that your command will work out better than...mine.”

  Bong. “I see,” said Li-Jared. “Then—if we were to decide to abandon the mission and turn around and get out of here while we’re still breathing, you would—what did you say—help us carry that out?”

  “I—” Jeaves paused, and for a long moment, seemed as if he had frozen.

  “Yes?” Li-Jared prompted.

  Finally, Jeaves twitched. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I really just don’t know.”

  Li-Jared snorted and turned away, but Bandicut stared at the robot thoughtfully. He wondered just how serious Li-Jared was in his hypothetical proposal. “At least he’s telling the truth,” Antares said, speaking before Bandicut could think what to say. “Uhhl, Li-Jared, is that what you want to do? Abandon the mission?”

  This time it was Li-Jared who took a long time to reply. He studied the robot out of the corner of his eye as he was thinking. “No,” he said finally. “Not really. But I wanted to know if Tinman here would tell us the truth. I didn’t believe for a second that he’d let us get away with something like that.” He bowed slightly toward the robot. “Thank you for being honest.”

  Bandicut could have sworn he saw Jeaves sigh in relief.

  “But there is something I want right now,” Li-Jared continued.

  “Yes?” asked the robot.

  “Input controls to the AI, here on the bridge.” Li-Jared pressed his mouth tightly closed, thinking. “And...”

  “And flight controls,” Bandicut interjected. “It’s about time you taught us to fly this damn thing. Is that what you were thinking, Li-Jared?”

  “That’s it. Flying lessons. When do we start?”

  *

  The changes, Jeaves said, would take a little time; they should get some lunch. They did. And when they returned, they found the walls glowing red, and flashing violently like a malfunctioning lighting panel. Jeaves asked them to wait a moment. The red lights gradually faded. A soft, white light appeared in its place, and a panel of instruments slowly extruded from the wall on the left. Another panel extruded on the right. The left one, however, detached from the wall and floated slowly to the center of the bridge, where it came to rest, still floating, in front of the balcony viewspace.

  “John Bandicut,” said Ik. “Are those your flight controls? Can you fly with that?”

  Bandicut stepped up to see. He peered over the instruments, which were largely incomprehensible. But in the center, there was a knobby thing like a joystick. He closed his hand over it. “I don’t see why not. Jeaves? Are you giving the lessons?”

  In answer, Delilah descended from the ceiling and circled around him, chiming.

  *

  While Bandicut was learning to fly, trading off from time to time with Li-Jared, Antares kept a silent watch, senses alert, trying to gain some understanding of Dark, and of the region they were flying through. Dark and Deep were now leading the ship together, but while Deep stayed relatively close, Dark ranged out ahead, scanning the territory, and then circled back for a periodic rendezvous. Dark didn’t seem to like to stay in one place, or even to move slowly. And, she liked to sing.

  It sounded to Antares like three or four, or perhaps many more, songs being sung around her at once, echoing back from space like sounds from distant bodies. Antares felt herself in the center of something noisy and confusing, and perhaps wonderful, and perhaps perilous. Songs.

  (Who is singing?)

  (Who is here?)

  Besides Dark, she felt the presence of Deep, and of her friends, but this wasn’t any of them. (Who is here?) Was it really just Dark, whose strains echoed across the seeming emptiness of space? She didn’t think so. There was a certain lyrical quality to the sounds, which she thought Deep and maybe Dark were enabling her to hear.

  But were they cries? Cries for help? She was starting to hear, or imagine she heard, words.

  Can we not ?

  Do we feel ?

  Do we know ?

  together we

  Torn

  we are torn

  Great wave coming

  cannot be stopped

  It came as a slow realization, that she was hearing the stars, in a confusing choir of voices. The voices were coming to her through Deep, and maybe Dark—but reverberating like widely separated voices echoing together in a ravine.

  But she felt among them a sense of growing urgency.

  *

  For Delilah, change was certainly in the air. Jeaves’s passing of control over to the organics was unsettling, not that she necessarily believed he meant it completely; but the AI was treating it that way, so she needed to, as well. The flying was different, too, with Dark scouting ahead to find the best n-space route to the heart of Starmaker, and Delilah herself teaching the organics to fly. While they were resting, though, she could focus on the closer details and keep her senses attuned to matters of interest, or danger, as they passed.

  Indeed, there was something coming into range now, just over the horizon of the n-space lines, something she’d like to take a look at if it didn’t mean deviating too much from their path. What was that? she wondered.

  Distortions in the background patterns, almost like a lensing effect. Was there something out there they should know about? Better to know than not know.

  Ever so gently, Delilah shifted their course to see.

  Chapter 19

  A Deadly Detour

  Li-Jared was the first to notice that the ship seemed to be veering somewhat to the right. He stood, hands on hips, glaring at the view ahead. “Why are we—” b-dangg “—changing course?” he asked loudly, of no one in particular.

  “Rrmm, what do you mean?” asked Ik.

  “Take a look.” Li-Jared pointed impatiently to the left of center. “We used to be headed straight for that star cluster. The bright clump. Now we’re aimed for that dark section to the right. In fact, that looks just a little weird there, don’t you think?” There were some faint arcs of light, almost as if some kind of gravitational lensing were occurring. He saw the confused look on Antares’s face. “You know—light rays bending as they pass a strong gravity source?” He spun around. “Jeaves?”

  “I’m here. No need to shout,” the robot said, shimmering into place in front of Li-Jared.

  “We’re turning. Why are we turning?”

  “I’m not sure, actually,” Jeaves said. “Wait a moment.”

  Li-Jared waited, but not patiently. He grew even more agitated when Jeaves reported, “Delilah has diverted to investigate an anomaly. Something here is exerting an unexplained influence on the shape of local n-space. It may be of artificial origin.”

  That was enough to make Li-Jared have to close his eyes to keep them from bulging out of their sockets. He felt a low growl rising in his throat, and had to forcibly turn the growl into words. “She—” rasp “—diverted without asking us? T
o steer us toward something artificial? Which is changing the shape of n-space?” Without consciously intending to, he realized, he had begun bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, with his hands twitching. Controlling his anger with effort, he turned to the others. “Did we approve of this? Were any of you asked if it was okay to do this?”

  Ik looked disturbed and indignant, and Antares troubled. Bandicut had a faraway expression; but after a moment, he jerked his head and said, “No. And Charli tells me, Deep senses something there that reminds it of the thing it destroyed when we first met. The Mindaru, if that’s what they’re called.”

  “Rrrm,” Ik said in a deep voice. “Is Deep going to neutralize this thing the way it did the other?”

  It had better, if we’re flying toward it, Li-Jared thought tightly.

  “No,” Bandicut said. “It’s too big. Too powerful.”

  “Too powerf—” Li-Jared began, but choked on his words before he could get it all out. Jeaves!

  Bandicut said it first, and he sounded angry. “Jeaves, you said you were giving us control over this mission! Did you mean it or not? Can you turn us and get us the hell away from that thing?”

  Jeaves looked very busy for a few moments, then said softly, “I’m afraid I can’t.” Over his head, the halo darted back and forth, chiming in alarm. Then it streaked out through the wall.

  Li-Jared started to advance on Jeaves before the robot added, “Delilah has released control; that’s not it. The problem is, we appear to be caught in a field of some kind. And it is, unfortunately, drawing us toward the center of that disturbance. I am attempting to analyze...”

  *

  “It doesn’t look to me like a force-field,” Bandicut said a few minutes later, in puzzlement. “It’s more like a strange landscape carved out of n-space, with ridges and valleys, and we just haven’t figured out how to move over it yet.”

  Li-Jared was still clearly angry. “It exerts a force, and it has field lines that we’re trapped in.”

  “However you want to describe it,” Jeaves interrupted, “we’re going to be getting a closer view, whether we want it or not. We might experiment with different angles of thrust, to see if we can maneuver across the field lines. But I recommend, for now, that we try not to generate unwanted attention.”

  “Do you believe the—what are they called?—Mindaru?—are creating this?” Ik asked.

  “Until we learn more, your guess is as good as mine. Let’s see if we can get a clearer view,” Jeaves said. “I can adjust the display...”

  The wisps of the distant, glowing nebula faded, giving way to a tracing of gossamer-thin lines that formed a pattern like grid lines on a topographical map. Overall, the lines revealed the shape of the nebula, including the curved gravity wells surrounding the stars, and the local n-space channel they had been following toward the nebula. To the right, but much closer, there was a coiled pattern of gravity lines, vaguely menacing in appearance. Near its center was a tiny fleck.

  Bandicut asked, “Can you magnify that? Is that the source of the pull?”

  “Yes, and yes,” said Jeaves. “Let’s see what we can do with that image. Of course, as it draws us closer, the image should become clearer.”

  “Wonderful.”

  The view crinkled and zoomed in sharply. An object only a little less black than space itself became visible. It had a complex, irregular shape, which seemed to change with a quick blur every few seconds. It had angles and spines, and whatever else it looked like, it was clearly artificial. Around it, the n-space gravitational lines spiraled in tightly, then became blurred close to the object.

  “It would seem,” said Jeaves, “that this object is causing extreme distortion to the local shape of n-space. In fact, it seems to be drawing n-space toward it.”

  Bandicut puzzled over that one for a moment. “You mean it’s moving space? How? And what the hell is that crinkling I see out there?”

  “I believe you’re seeing the quantum movements—quick jumps—of spacetime,” Jeaves explained.

  “Losing me,” Bandicut said.

  “Imagine you were trying to get players to move down a long playing field,” Jeaves said. “But the players didn’t want to move. They might even be trying to move in the opposite direction. If you were clever, you could shrink the field at one end and expand it at the other—in small increments, a few times a second, when nobody was looking.”

  Bandicut blinked hard. “So that thing is moving space, and we’re moving with it?”

  “Closer and closer, yes. You’ve heard of frame dragging—a spinning black hole dragging the fabric of spacetime around with it as it spins? Well, this object is dragging the lines of space inward, as well as around it. Very hard to get out of.”

  As Jeaves spoke, Bandicut heard Charlene-echo saying through Charli,

  <<< The only time Deep has felt

  space shaped this way,

  there has been at its heart

  an agent of the enemy,

  like the ones you call the Mindaru. >>>

  Li-Jared, meanwhile, was saying, “So what do we do? We’re not going to fly into its arms without a fight, are we?”

  “Not if you ask my opinion,” said Jeaves. “But it might not be aware of us yet. We should try to avoid notice until we decide on a course of action.”

  “If Deep can’t help us, what about Dark?” Ik asked.

  “Dark is out ahead, beyond communication range right now,” Jeaves said. “Unless Deep...John, can you ask whether Deep can make contact for us?”

  Bandicut muttered assent. But after asking Charli and Charlene-echo, he reported, “Deep believes Dark may come back soon—and may be able to pull us away. But we’re off course. So Dark could have trouble finding us.”

  “Enough!” Li-Jared cried, hands in the air. “Time’s wasting while we stand here talking! The hell with whether we’re attracting attention—let’s see if we can fly out of this thing before it’s too late. John Bandicut, do you want to do it or shall I? You’re the pilot, but if you don’t want to, I will.” Li-Jared strode forward as if to take the controls.

  Bandicut already had his hand on the joystick. He lifted his chin toward the others. “Antares? Ik? All right, then. Let’s try. Jeaves, give me some directions.”

  “Very well. Let’s try some right angles and see if we can slip out...”

  “Here we go,” Bandicut said, squeezing the control. The ship began to turn. But when he applied thrust, there was no change to their course, at least not in the right direction. He tried another angle.

  Ten minutes later, he stopped. They had exhausted every suggestion Jeaves could come up with for reversed or angled thrust, corkscrew maneuvers, and thrust toward the object. That last did move them faster toward the strange object, and Bandicut cut it off at once. But nothing seemed to help, and they were now visibly closer.

  “Look at this,” Jeaves said, opening a display window in the upper left corner of the viewspace. “It’s a false-color enhancement. It shows the movement more clearly.”

  In the display, all of the n-space gridlines were showing a slow, rippling movement toward the center. Combined with The Long View’s sideways movement, it produced a net inward spiral. “That’s the wide view. Now watch,” Jeaves said. The image zoomed in, revealing a small spaceship icon. “That’s us.” The gridlines around the spaceship were narrower and more focused, and moving faster, like water speeding up through a channel.

  Bandicut cursed softly. “We’re a swimmer caught in a riptide.”

  “Except this riptide is reacting to our attempts to escape,” Jeaves said. “It’s tightening around us.”

  Bandicut exhaled noisily. “Ideas, anyone?”

  Antares ran her fingers back through her hair. “How single-minded do you suppose that thing is? Could we distract it?”

  Li-Jared swung toward her, eyes bright. “How?”

  “I’m not sure. Is there some way to—I don’t know—shoot something out there to draw its
attention away from us?”

  Bwang. “You mean like a missile?”

  “Anything. A missile, a blob of n-space.” Antares waved her hands. “Can we create blobs of n-space?”

  “I can think of nothing that would fit that description,” Jeaves said. “Nor do we have missiles. The only thing I can think of is—”

  “The scout!” Bandicut blurted. “We could launch the scout craft, couldn’t we?”

  “To what purpose?” asked Jeaves. “It doesn’t have enough power to break free.”

  “No, but suppose we launch it, as if it were trying to escape. It might try any number of maneuvers. The point would be to get our friend out there to worry about it instead of us.”

  “We could even launch it toward the center object,” Ik said. “Make it think we’re coming after it. Distract it until Dark can come and pull us away.”

  “What,” asked Li-Jared, “is going to make something as powerful as that object get so distracted by a little scout module?”

  Bandicut heard a reply in his thoughts.

  <<< Possibly we could create

  a time-distortion bubble around the scout.

  That might exaggerate its apparent size and power,

  and serve to alert Dark at the same time. >>>

  “That may be where Deep can help us,” Bandicut said, relaying Charlene-echo’s thoughts. He glanced nervously at the graphical display, which showed them drawing steadily inward toward the center object. “It’s a long shot. But we have to act fast. Does anyone have a better idea?”

  Bong. “I’m convinced,” Li-Jared cried. “Let’s do it! Before it’s too late!”

  “How soon could we launch?” Bandicut asked.

  “The shipboard AI is preparing the craft now,” Jeaves said. “But who is going to fly it? We can’t operate it remotely. Even if we can get a comm channel open in this environment, it won’t make it through the time distortion.”

  Bandicut’s stomach took a sudden lurch. He’d just assumed it could be flown remotely. He hadn’t thought about someone actually having to get aboard and fly the thing. There was only one person who was even remotely qualified.