Robot and Yoshida ignored Suzy’s remark, which only made her more scared, more angry.
The Yoshida woman said to Robot, ‘If you got to the neuter female, you did more than the Navy ever could. Who are you? Wherever we are, I can’t use my Talent here.’
That was what was familiar about Yoshida, Suzy decided. She’d met Talents before, when Seyour Bonadventure had been showing off his combat flying team to guests. The way they looked at you, so sly, so superior, so above it all.
‘I am Robot, an artist and a criminal. My friend is Suzy Falcon, a combat singleship pilot. Both of us out of Titan, via Heaven, bound we know not where. One thing we do know, we’ve been entrusted with a mission against the marauders. We’ve been given a weapon against them.’
Suzy said, ‘And I still think we’ve been set up for some sort of kamikaze stunt. If those angels are so superior, why is it down to us?’
‘Suzy, I explained. They’ve evolved. They can’t exist in the Universe any more than a soap bubble can exist on the surface of the sun.’
‘The secret history,’ Yoshida said, turning to the neuter Alea. It was twice her height, but somehow she didn’t seem dominated by it. ‘You were right about the paradigm. Intelligent races must have been forced to evolve all over the Galaxy, to save it from the marauders. These angels, they must have been the ones who abandoned the technologies the marauders found. They must have been the ones who infected you with the intelligence paradigm, the template.’
Robot said, ‘They went away. They left the Universe for a place more suited to them. They didn’t know or they didn’t bother to think that others would come after them. They’d explored the whole Universe—it was so much smaller then—and found no other intelligent species. They thought that they were alone and they turned inward, developed a better way of existence. They went away, and abandoned the machines they used to open a path from here to there.’
His eyes were closed and he had a saintly look again, like light was glowing underneath his pale, blue-veined skin. He said, ‘And then the Alea came along. The Alea were only intelligent when they needed to be, when their sun flared. And when it finally grew too unstable, when the Alea fled to the core stars, some of them found the abandoned technology. The way the marauders are using it is threatening the interzone, and what’s beyond it. It means the gates from here to there can’t be closed off. They can’t come back to stop the marauders, and they can’t go on. It’s all coming clear now.’
Yoshida said, ‘If these angels went away, then who set the paradigm loose, who made other species evolve intelligence? Who launched the hypervelocity star?’
Robot said, his eyes still closed, ‘Not everything is clear. It’s important for some reason that I don’t know everything, not yet. I do know that the hypervelocity stars—many more than one, each with a wormhole gate orbiting it—were launched some time after the war between the marauders and the other Alea. One star for each intelligent species, to bring them here…You see, Dr Yoshida, we’ve been given a weapon to use against the marauders. I know how to use it, too. I just need to deliver it.’ He opened his eyes, looked at the Yoshida woman, looked at the tall Alea.
‘That’s great,’ Suzy said. She had been growing more and more impatient, more and more angry, during Robot’s blissed-out rap. She said, ‘I just don’t see why we have to get involved in this. People, I mean. Humans. It’s history, you said. Someone else’s history. What’s it to us? We’re supposed to be so grateful the angels gave us fire we rush to fight their war for them?’
Yoshida said, ‘I can give you a reason. It was something I learned on P’thrsn. The marauders can detect the use of phase graffles. It’s why the Alea we fought never used them. Every time a ship uses its phase graffle, it creates a discontinuity that propagates through contraspace. In fifty years or so, discontinuities from the first phase graffles will reach the core. I used to think that it would take a hundred more years for the marauders to travel back through contraspace to the Federation, that we’d have plenty of time to face up to them. But the wormholes cut that down to a matter of hours. You were a singleship pilot, Suzy. You fought against the Enemy. If the marauders aren’t neutralized now, in less than fifty years they’ll be sacking Earth, Elysium, everywhere. I don’t want war, and not just because I know humanity wouldn’t stand a chance against the marauders. What was given to you and your friend can prevent war without creating war.’
Suzy looked at Yoshida, at the Alea towering over her. The woman had balls, Suzy had to give her that, even if she did have absolutely the wrong attitude. But with that thing in her mind, who could blame her? Like Robot and the angels. Suzy thought, I’m the only one here who hasn’t been screwed up. I’m the only one who can do it right.
Robot said, ‘You don’t have to go, Suzy. I guess I can find another singleship pilot on the Vingança.’
‘I can fly,’ Yoshida said. ‘At least, I ran my own research ship.’
‘Bullshit,’ Suzy said. ‘Anyone can fly a ship from A to B, but it takes a little bit more than that in combat. And hell, Robot, where are you going to find someone who isn’t a babbling fanatic who thinks the marauders are Jesus Christ’s daddy?’
‘There are Navy personnel,’ Robot said, smiling.
‘Yeah. They’re gonna listen to you, man, but only if you cut your hair and work your way up through ranks. I was in the fucking Navy. I know.’
Robot said, ‘Are you saying you’ll do it after all?’
Suzy felt very cool now. Her anger collapsed down inside her, into a smooth ball dense as a neutron star.
‘I know why I’m doing it,’ Suzy said, ‘and it’s not for those glittery angels of yours.’ Save the human race? Right. They’d put her on the front page of every history book for the next million years. But she knew that she was going to do it her way, not theirs. She just had to hope that Yoshida had been telling the truth, that she really wasn’t able to read minds in the shared dream. She said, ‘Just get me out of that cell, man, and let me get my ship back. That’s all I ask. I made a mistake, I admit that. Now let me do some good.’
9
* * *
With Alverez at their head, the ramshackle party of scientists and rebel Navy officers moved quietly through a long narrow mesh-floored tunnel, passing at regular intervals arched junctions into other tunnels that sloped down or up into the ship’s various modules. They were heading for the maintenance section in the keel forward of the command blisters. Where, Alverez had said, there was all kinds of shit they could use when the time came. The Witnesses might control the ship now, he’d said, but they certainly did not know her the way he did. And besides, when this guy Machine was through, all they’d need do would be to carry out a simple mopping-up operation.
Talbeck made sure that he kept to the rear of the ragtag war party. His servant walked beside him, and in response to his subvocalized questions pressed shapes against his wrist with her cold, blood-stained fingers.
Yes, she told him, someone called Machine had told her what she must do. He had been speaking for Talbeck, she claimed. That was why she had obeyed him, killed the guard and set the officers free. She did not know what Machine was going to do to the ship, nor did she know where he had come from. But Machine knew where Dorthy Yoshida was, she added. He said that he would make sure that she was safe.
Talbeck thought about that. There was only one way of escape from the Vingança that Dorthy would automatically run to if she had the choice. It was time to cut loose.
Gunasekra was lagging behind the others, too. He told Talbeck, ‘This is not what I had in mind.’
‘You were going to tell me something, before the probe started sending back those pictures.’
‘It seems unimportant at the moment. You said that you know this Machine person.’
‘I believe that one of my trust funds gave him a grant once upon a time. I probably spoke with him for five minutes at some reception or other, on Urbis.’ Talbeck had slowed his pace, and
the rest of the party had drawn ahead, passing out of sight as the tunnel sloped up beyond an arched junction. ‘He was planning a work called Urban Terrorism, the kind of challenging, disruptive work I find exciting. We will turn off here, Professor. I have this pistol, you see. I’m sure you won’t do anything foolish.’
Gunasekra looked calmly into Talbeck’s ruined face. The servant had taken hold of his arm, but he was pretending not to notice. ‘I find any kind of violence distasteful, Seyour Barlstilkin.’
‘I’m pleased to hear that. That isn’t my fight, either. I already have a ship. Quickly now, before we’re missed.’
Talbeck let the servant lead the way. One of the things he had done while waiting for something to happen, back at the hypervelocity star, was have her computer chop into the Vingança’s systems and download a complete set of schematics. They went through a hatch into the service shafts, followed a cat-walk under colour-coded piping, around the omega-shaped loops of heat distribution pipes.
‘I have no quarrel with the Navy, or with the Witnesses,’ Talbeck said. ‘For me, they were a means to an end. I’ve seen what I was looking for, and now it’s time to go back to Earth, to spread the good news.’
‘I am to be your hostage, Seyour Barlstilkin?’ Gunasekra was taking it very calmly.
‘You’ll tell them, won’t you, Professor? You’ll tell them all you’ve seen, when we return. The hyperstructure, the trillions of kilometres of territory ripe for exploration. The Federation is already having trouble controlling the trickle of migration to the half-dozen new worlds opened up since the Alea Campaigns. This will be the beginning of an unstoppable torrent.’
‘That is what you want? To claim the hyperstructure spike for yourself? You are very ambitious, Seyour Barlstilkin, but you will forgive me for saying that no one could be that ambitious. And there is the problem of the marauders, besides.’
‘If I had any claim over the spike, I would gladly give it away. All I want to do is let people know what is here. The rest will follow. An end to Earth’s domination. It is a historical relic. It should have ended a century ago.’
‘Dear me, I think that you will speak more convincingly about these things than I ever could.’
‘I’m a criminal,’ Talbeck said cheerfully. ‘I left the solar system with the RUN police in hot pursuit. By now, I should think that they have sequestered everything I own. Or everything I’ve allowed them to know about, at any rate. But you, Professor, will be listened to. You are my witness.’
‘You are very certain we will return safely. I wish I shared your confidence.’
The servant was undogging a hatch. It opened onto a platform high above the graving docks in the ship’s keel. Talbeck put his hands on the platform’s flimsy rail, looked left and right. His servant had done well. Most of the launch cradles were empty, dark pits overhung by silent machinery, although some way to the stern batteries of arc lights glared down on a matt black singleship. But directly below the platform, rising out of cluttered shadow, was the scarred nose cone of his modified cargo tug.
10
* * *
Robot and Suzy Falcon vanished as abruptly as burst soap bubbles, and Dorthy was left with the neuter female in the dream of ancient P’thrsn. And then the mists came down and Dorthy was alone. Smooth stone bitterly cold under her bare feet, calm whiteness circling her. There was a way out, there had to be a way out: but Dorthy could not find it. She knew that somewhere there was a door, but it was always just beyond the edge of her sight.
‘I know what you’re trying to do.’ Dorthy’s words sank into white silence, but suddenly the tall black shape of the neuter female loomed out of the mist. Dorthy could feel traces of the other Alea mindsets crowding all around her.
She was the centre of their cold attention.
She said, ‘I know you’re trying to break out, but you’re all ghosts. Less than ghosts. Nucleotides strung like beads on a wire.’ For a moment she thought she saw the strings of mRNA jostling in the neurons at the basement of her brain. Long bristling snakes uncoiling through ribosomal templates. Code into memory, word into thought into deed. She pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes and said loudly, ‘This is in my head. Not in any computer, not on P’thrsn. My head, mine!’
Compassion, concern.
Dorthy turned, but the door moved as quickly as she did. She looked up at the neuter female. Her hands were clenched so tightly that her fingernails would have drawn blood, had she not been in the habit of biting them to the quick.
‘I know what you’re trying to do. I won’t have it.’
—We must act now. The marauders are here.
‘You were put in my head so you could fight your silly war? It was over more than a million years ago.’
—No. Our retreat was a setback, but now we have returned to the core in you, my child.
‘I’m human. I wasn’t hatched, I was born.’
—Yes. And all humans are our children. We know now what we only suspected before, that we were the unwitting cause of the kindling of intelligence in your species.
‘And you want to protect us because of that? Then why are you doing this to me?’
Dorthy could hardly see the neuter female now. Mist flowed in, softening, erasing.
—We need to ride your body to act in the real world.
‘No!’
For an instant the mist thinned a little, but then its whiteness bore down upon her. Dorthy fell to her knees, and continued to fall, tumbling through white void. Terror squeezed her shut like an eyelid. For a moment her Talent let her see the sparse constellation of human minds aboard the Vingança, scattered more widely than seemed possible. Without direction, she desperately dove towards them, and then she was kneeling in the cold red-lit cabin, bloody spittle spilling from her lips.
There was someone with her, the man from the common dream, the one who had called himself Robot. He helped her sit up, held a paper cup of water to her lips.
‘Thanks,’ Dorthy said, and drank greedily. The flat taste of the water, the pain of her bitten tongue, helped her concentrate. Her consciousness was a thin membrane stretched over a seething void. One lapse, and the Alea mindset would smother her thoughts like oil spreading over water.
Robot said, ‘It looked like you were having a fit.’ As in the dream, he was very tall and very thin, wearing only a suit liner. He was propping her up with his augmented arm. He smelt strongly of sweat. He said, ‘I’ll bet that Alea female was giving you trouble. Am I right? But don’t you worry, you’re back in the real now.’
‘If my Talent hadn’t been working, I wouldn’t have found my way back. I suppose she needed to use it, and that was her mistake. I think I can keep control.’
‘That’s good, because later on you can bet we’re gonna need what she knows. Can you get up? That’s good, we’ve got some travelling to do.’
Dorthy tried to get the answer out of Robot’s head, but the flow of his thoughts was like nothing she had ever seen before. A swirling rush interrupted by great gaps, a torrent filled with blank spaces. It was as if someone had tunnelled all through his brain. She said, ‘Where’s Suzy Falcon?’
‘That’s just it. We’ve got to get to the singleship before she does. And that’s not going to be easy, after what Machine did.’
They were walking quickly through narrow red-lit corridors. It was so very quiet.
‘Machine?’
‘The other part of me, except he’s not in my head any more. He’s downloaded himself into the control systems, broke up the ship. That’s why we have to hurry. I’m worried Suzy will get there before us and do something stupid.’
‘Against the marauders? Do we even know where they are?’
‘On that real big structure, at the edge of the accretion disc. Your passenger can tell us exactly. That’s what I’m hoping anyhow.’
‘I don’t know if I could ask her, not without losing control.’
‘But if it came to it you could do it. Here
we are.’
It was an airlock.
Robot said, ‘I told you, Machine broke up the ship. The Navy people are fighting the Witnesses and I had a time, getting from the place I was to here, without being shot up. And now we have to get to the main part of the ship. The keel. That’s where the singleship is.’
They suited up inside the lock, powered suits with heavy, clumsy radiation armour, and cycled through. Dorthy’s Talent was still at full strength, and the urgency that drove Robot was contagious. Still, she paused at the sill of the hatch in wonder, seeing against the ultraviolet glory of the vast braided river of infalling gases the sharp-edged silhouettes of two dozen modules slowly drifting away from the Vingança’s long spine.
Robot’s gloved hand clumsily grappled hers and drew her out; his other hand snapped a tether to her suit’s utility belt. There was so little light that she didn’t see the sled until her boots hit it. It was no more than a mesh platform over a frame holding a gas tank with a universal valve. Robot snapped the other end of Dorthy’s tether to the sled’s central rail, grabbed the control stalk. Silently, they began to fall towards what was left of the Vingança.
Robot had suggested they keep radio silence, in case Witnesses overheard them, but they could talk through a plug-in com line. Robot told Dorthy about the angels again, about the place between universes where they lived. Dorthy managed to glimpse a few of the strange fantastic images that whirled through the chaos of his mind. The beach he had dreamed into being. The infinitely braided patterns of the fractal desert. The burning angels. She asked if the angels’ weapon would destroy the marauders, and wondered if it was her question or the neuter female’s. No, the membrane which divided her passengers from herself was still intact. She could feel them, though, stirring in the smooth pathways of her limbic cortex like monsters patrolling the depths of a blood-red ocean.
Eternal Light Page 31
