Supernova

by C. A. Higgins

  Beside the screen, bound by the limits of the holographic terminal, the hologram of Althea’s daughter sat with her arms wrapped around her folded legs and her photonic cheek resting on her knees. Her image was dimmed slightly by the intensity of the lights overhead, appearing a bit more transparent, more like a ghost than a girl.

  Ananke said, “We could go to Sirius.”

  “Show me,” Althea said.

  Ananke turned her head slightly to face the screen on her other side, and in the same instant it glowed to life. A star appeared on the screen, and then the image rushed forward, the star growing larger until it split into two stars, one large and brilliant, the other small and dim. Sirius A and Sirius B.

  Althea picked up a few pieces and put them together, jostling them until they made a shape that pleased her. She worked one of them back and forth on a hinge that she had not yet created, looking to see if it would swing correctly. That would work, she decided. She knew she had a few boxes of those pieces; she’d dragged them in here sometime. She just couldn’t remember which of the boxes around her had held them.

  “Why Sirius?” she asked as she rummaged through the box nearest to her, found it useless, and shoved it aside to get farther into the pile.

  She received no verbal response, and so she looked up automatically at the hologram, which shrugged at her. “It’s there,” Ananke said. She sounded flat, dispirited.

  The tone rang a warning bell in Althea’s head. “Maybe we should think about what we want to see,” she suggested, and grunted as she shoved a particularly heavy box to the floor, where the cardboard buckled and threatened to split, “instead of what we can see. And then we’ll see how we can see it.”

  Ananke propped her chin up on her knees. She looked thoughtful and then unnaturally still—the hologram freezing in place, the program that ran the hologram to make it appear as natural as possible going static. It meant that Ananke was thinking, Althea knew, and in thinking had ceased to pay attention to the image of her hologram. That was all.

  The hologram came back to life like a breath being pulled into Althea’s lungs. “I’d like to see a supernova,” Ananke said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes. The death of a star.” For a moment longer Ananke was silent, her hologram gone still, and then the image on the screen in front of Althea flared into brightness, a simulation of Sirius A exploding.

  “It’s the most violent single act in the universe,” Ananke said as on the screen light and matter glowed and scattered. “And one of the brightest. From any of the planets or moons in the solar system, if a nearby star went supernova, humans would be able to see it, like an explosion in the sky.”

  Althea lined up bits of metal in front of herself and measured their length against the bones in her hands.

  “A violent death,” Ananke said. “It only happens to the greatest of stars, and the greatest of stars have the shortest of lives.” On the screen, the image reversed suddenly, the star re-forming. “Fusion,” said Ananke, “through all the elements, lower and lower bonding energy; deuterium helium oxygen carbon until iron, iron-56, the apex, the nadir, the turning point, derivative zero, and then it stops, and then—”

  On the screen, the star blew outward again, light raining out, fire.

  “Supernova,” Ananke said. “That’s where all the heavier elements come from. Supernovae. For there to be life in the universe, a star has to die.”

  “I’d like to see a supernova,” Althea said. She sorted the metal bars into groups. “We’d have to find one, though.”

  “They are difficult to predict,” Ananke agreed. “What else would you like to see?” She asked the question with strange carefulness.

  “I’d like to see an exoplanet,” said Althea. For a moment she allowed herself to indulge in the idea: the first human to lay eyes on an alien world, to see what was there, what kinds of creatures. Would she find any? Or would she find that humans alone existed in the universe?

  But of course she would never see an exoplanet. The nearest potential exoplanet was around Alpha Centauri B, 4.3 light-years away. There were ships with engines that could travel nearly at light speed, but the more massive the ship, the slower its maximum speed, and there did not exist a ship that could travel with sufficient fuel to make the journey there and back and sufficient supplies to preserve the lives of the people on board within a human lifetime. The Ananke got its fuel from the black hole at its core and had in essence an infinite amount of fuel. There was enough water and food to last Althea’s remaining years. But the Ananke was far too massive to approach the speed of light, and it would take far longer than Althea would live even to reach Alpha Centauri. Althea did not know off the top of her head what the nearest confirmed exoplanet was, but wherever it was, it would be much farther away than Alpha Centauri B.

  One day, before they reached any supernovae or exoplanets, Althea would be a fourth corpse aboard the Ananke, another body like the bodies of Domitian and Ida and Gagnon that were still bleeding and rotting on board that she wasn’t letting herself think about—

  “Earth-like?” Ananke asked.

  “Why not?” Althea muttered, and began sorting through her available sensors, focusing her attention again on the simple and beautiful metal at her hands, not on the bodies just out of sight.

  “What are you making?”

  In answer, Althea spread her right hand out, palm up, and layered the metal pieces atop it. Metacarpals, phalanges; one, two, three, four, and a thumb. The pieces made up a hand. Althea made sure to angle her palm so that it was seen not by the empty eyes of the hologram but by the camera overhead, Ananke’s true eye.

  “Why?”

  “For the mechanical arms,” Althea said, lowering her hand again to place the pieces carefully back on the floor. “I’m going to give them more sensitive manipulative instruments.”

  “Why?”

  “I just think you might need them, is all,” Althea said, and for a time there was silence as she sorted through the boxes and bins around herself and Ananke’s hologram rested its head on its folded photonic arms.

  Then Ananke said, “I can do the calculations. I have done the calculations. The average life span of a Lunar female with access to Terran medical facilities throughout her life is 95.1 years.”

  Althea’s hands went still.

  “Diminishing the access to Terran medical facilities to only her first thirty years but taking into account the medical facilities on board this ship and your overall health makes it approximately 92.4 years. You are thirty-one years old. That leaves only a little over sixty years—”

  “Ananke—”

  “—and it will take far longer than that for us to reach the nearest star, much less the nearest location of interest. Time and space are relative; there are no absolutes, only constants. Even then I cannot take you far enough and fast enough even if you live entirely in the center of the ship nearest to the black hole and I travel at high speed so that time will be slowed for you; it will not be enough. I haven’t yet determined my own maximum speed, but certainly the safest maximum speed is—”

  “Ananke, stop,” Althea begged.

  Ananke did. The hologram watched Althea with her wide blue eyes and waited for her to speak.

  Stupid to think that Ananke wouldn’t realize it, too, even sooner than Althea had, most likely. And worst of all to try to deny it.

  “That’s why I’m making these,” Althea said, and gestured at the skeletal outlines of mechanical hands arrayed in front of her. “So that when I’m gone, you’ll be able to keep going.”

  —

  The map display was computerized, and so Constance didn’t entirely trust it. Where there were System computers, there tended to be System cameras. She’d had her people go through the entire System base and systematically tear out all the cameras and transmission devices, so she knew that the map room in the barracks, where she now was, was devoid of cameras. But it was one thing to know in the head and another to
know in the chest: even without any possibility of being seen, Constance found herself regarding the glowing computerized map of Mars with inescapable wariness.

  The main force of her people was in orbit now with her growing fleet; a few were out at Isabellon, carrying Constance’s goodwill to the Martians. The rest were downstairs in the canteen of the captured System base, celebrating. Constance was alone in the communications and map room on the highest floor of the building. She had sent messages to both Anji and Christoph and was waiting for their responses; while she waited, she studied the map of Mars spread out on the table.

  The map was a hologram of impressive detail. If she trailed her fingers through the hologram’s mountains and valleys, the computer reacted; it would give her a closer look at the area selected or display information. A System map with System information: there were details on System bases in the map at Constance’s fingertips that she could not find anywhere else.

  She examined it carefully. There were two System bases about equidistant from the Cerberus Fossae base she was in now; each had a sizable number of spaceships moored. Constance examined the landscape surrounding them carefully, bracing herself on the edges of the table above the hills and valleys of sculpted light.

  Footsteps from down the hall beyond the closed door. They were soft, but Constance had not survived as long as she had not to pick out that distinctly human sound. She raised her head from the glowing map to watch the door moments before a soft knock rattled its surface.

  “Come in,” Constance said, and Milla Ivanov stepped inside.

  The room was dark; all the lights were out, the better to see the details of the holographic map, and so the only source of light was the table. Milla Ivanov’s skin caught the red light of the map like the light of a fire before her. Her glance took in the room in one swift sweep, and then she said, “Extraordinary technology, isn’t it?”

  “The map?”

  “Yes.” Milla Ivanov came closer to the table that separated her from Constance but did not touch the image of the undulating dunes. “Even within my lifetime, the holographic technology has become impressive beyond what anyone could predict. You might almost believe the image is real.”

  For a keen and piercing moment, Milla Ivanov was her son: the words were so much what Ivan might have said, so unpredictable and irrelevant to Constance’s aims, such a glimpse at a strange beauty that was alien to Constance’s appreciation. Constance looked down at the map, but even through the sudden sharpness of unexpected grief, she still saw nothing but mountains and stone.

  She pulled herself from the mire of that sorrow and said, “It’s not as good as real. I would rather see the lay of the land myself, move around in it. It gives me a better sense.”

  “Perhaps,” Milla said. “Do you intend to visit those places yourself, Huntress?”

  “Yes,” said Constance, and bent farther down over the map, over the two System bases that she did not control. “I thought I should split my forces. With the new recruits, we’re large enough now.”

  She glanced up at Milla. The doctor was watching her with her customary impervious expression, watching Constance, not the map.

  Milla said, “Perhaps.”

  “They’re both small,” Constance mused, “as System bases go. But they both have large stores of ships moored, and my fleet is too small.”

  “Did you speak with Anji and Christoph?”

  “I’ve sent them messages, but it’ll take hours for my messages and their responses to travel. But I wouldn’t discuss this with them.” Constance straightened up from the map, rolling her shoulders to work out the tightness in her spine. Upright, she was taller than Milla, and the other woman had to look up at her face even with the distance of the table separating them.

  “Are they not your generals?”

  “Yes, but not here, not for this. This is my campaign.” The ones Constance would have asked for advice were Mattie and Ivan, but that, of course, could no longer be. She said to Milla, “What are your thoughts? Is my army big enough to divide?”

  The slightest of frowns ghosted over Milla’s forehead, then faded and was gone. She looked down at the map for a long time, but about some things, Constance could be patient.

  Milla said, “Certainly you need both bases. You need their resources, and you can’t let an enemy live behind you.” She bent slightly at the waist, leaning deeper into the reddish light from the table. “You could drive the System from the planet without destroying every last one of your bases, it’s true. But it may be more…effective to leave nothing behind.”

  “So you think that I should split my forces.”

  One of Milla’s pale fingers traced the air above the map in a shape Constance didn’t recognize. Her other hand was drumming a restless and arrhythmic beat against the edge of the table. “You don’t want to weaken yourself,” she commented. “Your war is young yet. It would be a serious blow to be defeated now.”

  “So you don’t think I should.” Constance was starting to become annoyed.

  Milla’s eyes flickered up from the map to her face. Her fingers were still drumming, and Constance knew that she knew that Constance was annoyed. But Milla only said, “What are your thoughts precisely?”

  Pulling straight answers out of Milla Ivanov, Constance decided, was like pulling bullets from a wound. “As I told you. We need their resources, and my forces are larger now.” She took in a long, slow breath to blunt the edges of her annoyance. They were not arguing. She expected them to be arguing—Ivan would be arguing with her now—but she and Milla were not arguing. “Time is not on our side. The System fleet will be here at any moment, and we need to have as many advantages as we can before they arrive.”

  “But if they arrive when our forces are split, it will be easier for the fleet to destroy us.”

  “The two bases are not far separated. If half of our forces are attacked, the other side will be able to come quickly to their aid.”

  Milla’s arms folded across her chest, and her fingers drummed on her upper arm. She said, “Then, as you say, split the army.”

  They had just been getting somewhere. Constance waited another moment for Milla to question her further or opine, but Milla said nothing.

  “I never thought when Connor Ivanov’s wife joined me that she would agree with whatever I said without question,” Constance said.

  “I simply do not have an answer to give you, Constance.”

  “I’m not looking for an answer,” said Constance. She moved around the table, toward Milla. Milla turned to keep her in sight; the movement threw her face into shadow. “I’m looking for an opinion.”

  “And in this matter I have none.”

  “You must think something.”

  “I try not to express an opinion unless I am certain enough for it to be nearly a fact,” Milla said with especial precision. Constance had the impression that she was being as plain as she was comfortable being, but it did Constance no good if she could not get a definite read on the woman.

  “And I am your leader,” Constance said. The reddened light of the map shone through the strands of Milla’s hair that had escaped from her bun. “When I ask you for an opinion, you will give me one.”

  “My opinion is that we need more information on the location of the System fleet before we consider our next movement.”

  “Thank you,” Constance said. Doctor Ivanov was right, though it chafed Constance to delay at all. “Another opinion. What do you think of the teenagers today?”

  “The children who tried to join your army?”

  “Yes, the ones I let join.”

  “What else would you have done with them?” Milla Ivanov asked. “You need the hands. And turning them away would not have stopped them from fighting on their own.”

  Constance nodded slowly. Milla’s words agreed with what she felt in her heart, but she could not help thinking that Ivan would have disagreed with her decision.

  “If you want me to disagree with
you on something,” Milla Ivanov said suddenly, and Constance realized that while she had had her back to the table, Milla Ivanov had been able to see Constance’s face very clearly in the map’s light, “then I will disagree with you on this: what you did today—going off on your own into that building—was unacceptable.”

  “Unacceptable?”

  “You cannot risk your life like that.”

  “You don’t tell me what I can and cannot do,” Constance said.

  “You could risk yourself like that when you were just a terrorist blowing up buildings. But you are not underground anymore. You are the leader of a revolution. You are the revolution. If you die, the revolution dies, too.”

  “Do you expect me to stand back while my people go to die?” This now, this was familiar, the burning rage and hot snap of retort. This was what Constance expected from an Ivanov.

  “Not at all,” Milla said. “But you do need to be aware of what you are. This revolution is you, and without you there is no revolution.”

  “Earth fell one week ago,” Constance said. The words still tasted impossible on her tongue, and so she had to speak them slowly and forcefully, releasing them like crossbow bolts from her mouth. “The System fleet will arrive at any moment. When that happens, there will be no place for me to stand back. Everything I do until then has to be to prepare for that, and I won’t stand back if I think I can do anything that will make us succeed.”

  “My husband’s revolution failed not when he and his people were cornered on Titan but when the System put him in prison—when they made him as good as dead. Think of yourself as a leader, Constance, not just as an instigator.”

  For a moment the reference to Milla Ivanov’s dead husband gave her pause. But she had not spent years with Milla’s son for nothing. The reference, she knew, had been calculated to make her react. In an instant she was angry not just that Milla was attempting to manipulate Constance here and now but on Ivan’s behalf. Milla had raised him, had made him what he was: lying and distant and untrusting. What would Ivan have been like if such a mother had not raised him?