by Mel Keegan
“I’m not sure,” Travers said honestly. “Let me talk to Mark. If there’s anything to tell, you’ll know.”
“Hey, man, take care.” She dealt his shoulder a mock punch on the way by and called over her shoulder, “If you need me, Mark, I’ll be in the crew lounge. Try not to need me.”
“I will,” he promised. And then, “What’s wrong, Curtis?”
Marin and Travers had joined him at the long workbench in the back, where a litter of tools and the remains of several meals cluttered the surface between several screens. Marin pulled a stool up to the bench and leaned back on one elbow, hunting for words with obvious caution. “We were talking to Mick. He’s starting to think he’s lost it.” He tapped his temple. “You said he was suspended on, or in, something like an event horizon, on the edge of the stable region where the driftways wash up?”
“Yes.” Mark perched on another stool and glanced at Travers. “From what Lai’a tells us, the Orpheus-Odyssey hybrid was suspended there for quite a long time, weeks at least. It took more power than they actually had to break out, but time was passing so slowly in the layer of the event horizon where they were caught, their trajectory was decaying at only a few percent per annum, according to what we would term realtime. They might have been suspended there for years before they fell right back into the stable zone.” He was waiting now, bright eyed, as if he knew what Marin was about to say.
“He says,” Curtis said carefully, “he saw things. Glimpsed scenes that never actually happened. Is it possible, Mark, or is it just hallucinations due to the fact he was sick, fried in the field?”
The gold Resalq eyes widened. “I thought he might have experienced something like this, but I wasn’t going to ask. He might have suppressed the memories, and if he had, they’re better forgotten.”
“Then, he could have seen things, real things?” Travers would have preferred to be told Vidal had hallucinated. “On instruments?”
“No. In his mind, his memory.” Mark passed his fingertips over his own brow. “And yes, he could easily be concerned for his sanity.”
“Seeing things in his own mind?” Travers struggled to grasp what Mark was saying. “But not dreams, not the ghosts you see when you’re whacked out, on a bad trip?”
“No.” Mark sorted through the discarded cups for one that could be pressed into service, and poured the last tea from a glass pot in the ornamental Resalq style. He sipped slowly, thoughtfully. “The event horizon placed Vidal at what I’m going to describe as a temporal crossroads. Don’t take the term too literally! It’s the gray zone where thousands of possible futures branch off from the present, and therefore hundreds of parallel pasts that have happened fan out behind us.”
“Parallel timestreams,” Marin groaned. “Everybody knows the theory. I thought it was still just that – theory.”
“It is,” Mark affirmed. “But I believe Vidal might just have stumbled on the proof of this particular theory. It’s never happened before that a human was suspended in an event horizon, and then reeled in like a trout, and lived to tell what he saw.”
Travers passed a hand before his eyes. “I must have cut this class when I was in college.”
“You cut far too many,” Mark admonished. “You’ve never heard the theory that every decision we make in this moment results in a different future, and all those futures exist, side by side, like threads in a temporal tapestry the size of the universe?”
“I’ve heard it,” Travers admitted. “I never thought much about it.”
“Well, every future branching off a current, momentary decision one of us makes,” Mark said with a wry smile, “has to involve a corresponding past timestream, because the future continuously becomes the past. There are timestreams where we were never born, or we perished in infancy, or grew up into paragons of virtue, or serial killers. If an infinity of parallel futures plays out, the process will spawn an equal number of parallel pasts, yes?”
“Makes sense,” Travers allowed. “So Mick was suspended in this gray zone, and … what?”
“And,” Marin guessed, “time was passing so infinitesimally slowly, he was actually seeing into the parallel futures and pasts as they branched off?”
“He would have been peripherally aware, a microsecond at a time,” Mark cautioned. “Like a waking dream or, more properly, a nightmare. Memories belonging to other timestreams would flitter past his mind’s eye in one of the ultimate paradoxes. You shouldn’t recall anything that happened in a timestream other than your own, but there are physics to describe the crossroads, the gray zone where time is so warped, rucked, folded, knotted, a hundred of these temporal threads are so compressed on each other, they’re impinging. Shadows from one stream fall into another. Phantom memories are recalled by people who chose a different path, and who never lived the events they’re remembering.”
“Christ.” Travers squeezed his eyes shut. “Talk to Mick. He saw some terrible things, and what’s killing him is wondering if it’s the future.”
Now Mark was emphatic. “I can say with some certainty, those events were not the future.”
But Marin gestured at the dormant, idling threedee. “What was all this about microcosmic bubbles, self-generating event horizons, time running backwards?”
“Oh, that.” Mark made dismissive gestures. “This simulation is running in two-second subdivisions, slowed down so we can investigate the permutations of nanosecond variations in the transspace flux.” He chuckled. “Did that sound as bad as I think it did?”
“Yeah, it did.” Marin hopped down off the stool and jabbed a finger into Mark’s chest. “You’re getting worse. Know what you need? Two weeks on a tropical island, covered in coconut oil, toasting yourself, absorbing the pina coladas by osmosis, and getting humped within an inch of your life by someone you like enough to be close.”
“I don’t have the time,” Mark said ruefully, though he was not quick to deny the allure of the suggestion. “Later.”
“After the war,” Travers said, singsong. “If I had five credits for every time we’ve said those words, I’d be buying a ranch on Darwin’s.”
Mark laughed softly. “Those days are coming. The battles of Velcastra, Jagreth, Borushek and Omaru will finish it, and those systems are well defended. And we,” he added, “will be hunting Zunshu before the month is out. Lai’a is impatient.”
“Will you be at the crew meeting, before we leave Alshie’nya?” Travers wondered.
“In the morning.” Mark nodded, “before I leave you. I’ll be on the Carellan, with the kids.” He smiled at that. “It doesn’t matter how old they get, I still think of them as kids – Dario, Leon, Tor. Of course, Roy is a kid.”
“And welcome in your family,” Marin observed.
“As you were.” Mark offered his hand, and Curtis took it. “And still are, if you want to be.”
“I want to be.” Marin lifted the Resalq’s hand and kissed the tiny scars. “We’re not going far, Mark – Darwin’s is only four or five weeks away by clipper.”
“And via transspace?” Mark’s voice was hushed. “What we’re seeing in the data Lai’a brought out is astonishing. Transspace allows for transit times – in other words, what you understand as speeds – that are so far beyond anything we ever knew before, Darwin’s World could be a day trip. When the technology has been mastered, refined, perfected, everything is going to change. There won’t be much of this galaxy left inaccessible.”
“Then, there’s no reason we can’t buzz over to Saraine for dinner,” Travers said with dry humor, “and bring you back for a weekend.”
“I suppose not.” Mark seemed to relish the humor. “And yes, I’ll talk to Michael. For what it’s worth, I think I am seeing time running into negative values here, but these are nanosecond events. At this level, time is as pliable as molten candy. On the macro level, however –? No. Michael was glimpsing into parallel pasts. It’s unfortunate the memories have stuck. I was more than half expecting him to experience th
is, but I was also hoping the memories would vanish as fast as they appeared.”
Marin’s head was shaking slowly. “He’s hurting, Mark. He’s remembering some absolute, bloody nightmares. If you can convince him they’re not looming out there in the future, it would put part of his mind at rest. If you can suppress the memories a little, as you offered to do for Teniko, even better.”
“I might be able to do it,” Mark agreed, “if he’ll let me. It takes two to dance that kind of tango. Tonio wouldn’t even try.”
“Speaking of the little bastard,” Travers remarked, “We haven’t seen much of him.”
“He’s working, when he can.” Mark gestured aft, at another of the labs. “When he’s high as a kite, as he often needs to be, he sleeps or walks around looking stoned. He’s growing. Changing – at least, his body is. His mind is as nasty a place as ever.” He stirred, finished the tea and grimaced at the dregs. “Is Michael awake now?”
But Travers made negative noises. “Let him sleep awhile. We took him out of the Infirmary for half an hour, just a stretch of the legs and a breath of some air that didn’t smell antiseptic. The effort knocked him on his back. He frightens me to death.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Mark leaned over and put the threedees into idle mode before he pushed away from the bench, leaving it to the drones which would clear away the debris. “I might not be able to manage a week on a tropical island –”
“Two weeks,” Marin said pointedly.
“—or the intravenous pina coladas and so forth, but I can take the time for a shower, a half hour under a sunlamp, a change of clothes … a very large brandy.” Mark stretched. “Barb’s right. This work could turn you into a toadstool.” He dropped one arm over Marin’s shoulders and the other over Travers’s. “I’ll see you at Harrison’s crew assembly, before you go.”
He left the lab ahead of them, and Travers watched him stroll away toward the common room, aft of the labs, with a stiff gait that was unusual for Mark, or any Resalq short of extreme old age. He was working too hard, while Travers himself was keenly conscious of having time on his hands. He leaned over and laid his lips against Marin’s ear. “Jacuzzi. Six pack. You can do me in the water.”
“Or you can do me,” Marin said easily and accused, “hedonist.”
“Or we could hit the gym and pump iron for an hour,” Travers suggested.
Marin pretended to think about it for a moment. “Jacuzzi,” he decided. “Six pack. Sex in the water.”
The crew lounge was packed, and several people were standing. The status boards displayed the long countdown to the Wastrel’s departure, and Shapiro’s company had gathered, drifting in over the space of ten minutes, while Travers watched.
Vidal and Roark Hubler were sitting at one end of the long mess table, heads close together, talking in undertones. Beside Vidal, Queneau and Ernst Rabelais were talking softly to Rusch, while Asako Rodman worked with a handy, remote-tasking drones aboard her ship. The Harlequin was shuttling between the Wastrel and Lai’a, delivering the last loads of fittings for the habitation module. In an hour, the fabrication run would be offloaded. The tug pilots had already plotted a nav solution for Velcastra. Three days, and Vidal would have his feet on the artificial ground of StarCity. He would look into his father’s face and try to convince the old man that the work he was doing was worth the cost.
Along from the Rabelais group, the Sherratts had gathered and were thrashing out some issue peculiar to the Carellan Djerun. Mark, Dario and Leon were one side of a heated debate, while Tor Sereccio, Roy Arlott and Midani Kulich had taken the other side. They were arguing in Resalq, getting louder every moment, and Travers could only wonder what the fight was about.
At the end of the lounge, Vaurien and Jazinsky stood in a loose embrace. She was tired to the bone, Travers thought, but Richard looked a little more rested. The three day crossing to Velcastra would give him a priceless opportunity for downtime, and Travers hoped he would take it. But Richard was glaring over the top of Jazinsky’s bowed head, and Neil followed the line of his eyes.
Tonio Teniko was sober for the moment – haunted, hollow eyed, growing gaunt as his body was forced to grow. He was far from as gaunt as Vidal, Queneau and Rabelais, Travers observed, but still much too thin, and strained. He was dressed in plain green fatigues, baggy about his ailing body, as if even the press of fabric hurt. Vidal had dressed in the clothes Marin had chosen for him, but Queneau and Rabelais seemed content in the voluminous robes. They had consigned themselves to the Infirmary until Grant released them, while Vidal chafed at every moment there, and did not care who knew it.
The medic was leaning on the wall right inside the door, dividing his attention between a scanner, Teniko and Vidal. He was taking readings off them both, and his expression was thunderous as he studied Teniko, while he merely sighed over Vidal.
And behind them all, standing along the back wall because there were no more chairs, and no space for them to be brought in, were Gillian Perlman and Jim Fujioka, rubbing shoulders with a significant portion of Bravo company. Fargo, Inosanto, Kravitz and Choi were bantering as usual, trading insults as only comrades could without the scene evolving into a fist fight. Perlman and Fujioka were close; his arm was around her waist, and she would turn her head, whisper something into his ear that made him smile. Travers was surprised, and knew he should not have been. They had been together for a long time. They had become a couple recently, and not long ago Travers would have envied them.
Now, he watched Marin talking easily with Vidal and Hubler, and he felt only pleasure as he thought back on the games they had played in the Jacuzzi. If Perlman and Fujioka were a tenth as content, he would be happy for them. The company was waiting only for Shapiro and Kim, and as they stepped into the lounge, Travers took stock.
He saw a crew of 26, every one a specialist. Six were women; five were Resalq; several had paired off. More importantly, he saw eight pilots, six physicists, two engineers, two medics, a linguist, and eleven among their number who would call themselves soldiers. In the years of their Fleet hitch they would have chafed at the discipline, the five-year imprisonment of conscripted service. But now the Fleet training was about to become an incalculable asset.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Shapiro began, calling the assembly to order, “thank you for taking the time to be here. I believe everyone in this room is acquainted more or less intimately, so introductions are unnecessary. The purpose of this meeting is merely to compare notes, make recommendations, set schedules, voice concerns. If any of you has an objection to the expedition, a grievance against the company, a requirement that hasn’t yet been addressed, this is the time to outline it.
“As you know, the data returned both by the Orpheus and Lai’a has been used to minimize the risk, but you’re also well aware that nothing will erase that risk entirely. We go into transspace knowing the danger, and everyone on this expedition has accepted it. I’ll ask for comments, now, from anyone who disagrees with this statement.”
The meeting was smooth, calm, professional. Even the most junior members of the crew were all vastly experienced, and when Travers looked back over his shoulder at them – the ‘kids’ of Bravo Company – he found Fargo looking his way, and she gave him a conspiratorial wink. She took the rank of lieutenant seriously, and she did not underestimate the privilege of being invited aboard by Harrison Shapiro himself. Much of Bravo was still together, and the irony of their next assignment was not wasted on them.
They were going back aboard the Intrepid, though the ship had become the body of a vast Resalq artificial intelligence, and the habitation module was the hull of a cruiser like the Mercury, vacuum welded into place in the belly inside an armored cocoon of Zunshu alloy. Ahead of it were the accessible hangars. In one was the Harlequin; in the second were the Earthlight, two gunships and a full squadron of fighter-interceptors. The Intrepid had taken aboard the warload of several carriers as well as fabrication bays similar to those aboard the Wastre
l, thousands of drones, and a store of the Zunshu mines which would soon devour a carrier battle group at Velcastra.
She was an island universe, Travers thought. She could have supported a crew twenty times the size, but Shapiro’s company was deliberately small, elite, highly qualified. There was no space for a passenger, and to Travers mind the complement was superbly balanced, from Vaurien who would command it on down.
For an hour, minor points were debated, a few genuine problems hammered out, while Etienne supplied supporting data. Twice, Lai’a spoke over the open comm, identifying its own issues. When the lounge fell silent at last, Shapiro was satisfied.
“Then, we’ll call it there, ladies and gentlemen,” he said easily. “The Wastrel will be leaving in an hour, but we’ll return to Alshie’nya just before the work on the habitation module is completed. At that time we’ll transfer aboard Lai’a, with a loaded navtank, and we’ll go hunting for a Class Seven event on the Orpheus Gate. My understanding is that we tack directly into the Odyssey Tide, and in a matter of hours we’ll see the Orion Gate, which is the dropout point at Orion 359, the other location at which Doctor Sherratt’s ships discovered evidence of Zunshu activity. Sites,” he added thoughtfully, “that involved neither Resalq nor humans.
“From there we follow a path reverse-engineered from a piece of Zunshu scrap metal recovered from the Freespace colony of Celeste. We believe the data will thread us through transspace and bring us to point zero.” There, he paused. “We have every reason to believe that point will be the Zunshu homeworld, or some hub of Zunshu authority. For the record, we go there to negotiate a peace. A ceasefire. The Lai’a expedition is not deliberately punitive.
“The Zunshu have demonstrated their technological and military superiority over us, and it would be a grave and arrogant error for us to assume we have any ability, much less any right, to go there and attempt to retaliate, or take any measures of reprisal, much less punishment.
