Analog SFF, March 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  After a minute the gunfire stopped. He glanced back to see their pursuers close, but keeping a decent distance.

  Hayden smiled. There was nowhere for him to go—or so those men thought. They believed that if they hung on his tail long enough he would have to give up. After all, there was no place to hide here, and no way to get inside Candesce.

  They were in for a surprise.

  * * * *

  A long wing of shadow swept into Winter behind Sargasso 44. The gnarled black fist of burnt forest, its outlines softened by mist, wasn't much to look at after Leaf's Choir, but it was still a respectable three miles across. The Rook and its sisters crept up to the hidden shipyard from its unlit side, their running lights off. Two bikes jetted out of Chaison Fanning's modest flagship to reconnoiter and he waited, not on the bridge but in the hangar, for their return.

  Propriety be damned. He glanced at the ticking wall clock, then at his men. Two hours until Falcon's suns dimmed into their night cycle. In two hours the plan would succeed or fail. And everybody knew it, but nobody would speak of it.

  They'd installed the radar casting machines in the nose of each ship and tried them. Of course they didn't work—there was only a bright fuzz on the hand-blown cathode ray tubes bolted next to the Rook's pilot station. But as each sister ship turned its own radar on or off, the fuzz had brightened or dimmed. Some sort of invisible energy was in play here. Chaison had been cheered by that tiny hint of future success.

  And the men ... He looked at them again. They'd been running drills for days now to perfect the art of firing blind according to orders from the bridge. The rocketeers looked confident.

  He shook his head and laughed. “Lads, I don't mean to be insulting, but you look like pirates.” Some were wounded, others had hasty repairs to their uniforms to cover sword—and bullet—holes. It was the jewelry, though, that set them apart from any other crew Chaison had worked with. As battle approached the men had been sneaking off to their lockers to collect their treasures, as if the talismanic weight of future wealth would keep them alive through the coming battle.

  It was so far from regulation that he could validly have any one of them whipped for it. Necklaces might get in the eye, or tangle a hand at a crucial moment.

  Nobody was going to be disciplined, and they all knew it. Perversely, knowing they knew it pleased Chaison. He felt an affection for this crew he hadn't known for any other he'd worked with.

  The bikes’ contrails hit the side of the sargasso and vanished. Forty-four was too small and old to have retained a toxic interior, especially with transport ships coming and going and all the industry happening inside it. Chaison had nonetheless insisted that the men on the bikes wear sargasso suits. It would a fine irony if they were knocked out by fumes and sailed their bikes right into the shipyard.

  “Now we wait,” said Travis. Chaison shot him an amused look.

  “We've been reduced to clichés, have we?” he said.

  Travis stammered something but Chaison waved a hand in dismissal. “Don't mind me,” he said. “I'm feeling free for the first time in weeks.”

  “Yes, sir.” Then Travis pointed. “Sir? Look.”

  The bikes were returning already. Falcon's shipyard must lie closer to the sargasso's surface than he'd thought.

  “All right.” Chaison clapped his hands briskly. “Let's see where we stand.”

  * * * *

  Hayden had seen clouds bigger than these rising spires, but nothing else—not even the icebergs at Virga's skin—could compare. On the outskirts of Candesce long arcing stanchions connected many glittering transparent spines, which soared into the surrounding air like the threads of the jellyfish that hid in Winter clouds. These spines were miles long but they were not anchored to a single solid mass. Candesce, he was surprised to see, was not a thing, but a region. Hundreds of objects of all shapes and sizes gleamed within the sphere of air sketched by the giant spires. Candesce was an engine open to the outside world.

  So what was Venera's key intended to unlock? They glided in between the outreaching arms at a sedate pace. The enemy catamarans were hanging back, confident in being able to catch the bike and curious to see what Hayden would do. The moment was strangely peaceful, or would have been if not for the savage heat that radiated from those needles of crystal.

  “Are they glass?” he wondered aloud. Beside him, Aubri shook her head.

  “Diamond,” she said. “Re-radiators.”

  As they passed the spires dim orange glows from the dormant suns revealed traceries of intricate detail further in: ribs and arching threads of cable, mirrored orbs the size of towns, and long meandering catwalk cages. With all the suns lit, internal reflection and refraction must double and redouble until it was impossible to separate real from mirage. Drowned in light, Candesce would disappear as a physical object. These spars and wires were like the crude ghost of something else that had no form. That something had left, for now—perhaps stalking the distant air to devour a principality or two. But it would return to its den come morning, and then this diamond and iron would give over to a greater reality, one made of light. Any person foolish enough to be here would disappear as well.

  Venera and Carrier had raised their heads to stare as well. Hayden breathed in little sips; the heat was making him dizzy. “Where?” he asked Aubri with renewed urgency.

  She scanned the unlikely bauble of the sun of suns. “There.” Where she pointed, a dark rectangle lay silhouetted by one of the suns. It was nestled against the diamond point at the base of one of the spines. “That should—should be the visitors’ center.”

  Hayden barked a laugh and instantly regretted it as the air seared his throat. “Another tourist station?” But Aubri shook her head.

  “This one—” she gasped spasmodically, “is for education and maintenance. No remote control. No tourists.”

  “Nobody waiting for us, I hope.”

  She shook her head. Hayden fired up the bike and they shot through the glittering clouds of machine and cable. Now, though, he heard the sound of other engines. The Gehellen catamarans were closing in.

  He guided them down the curve of the spire, alert for anything familiar. The rectangle ahead slowly resolved into a boxy structure about thirty meters on a side, made of some white substance. The crystal spike pierced its side, and next to that spot was a small square on the box. Hayden blinked in the wavering air; was it real? Yes, it was there: a door.

  Sleek blue spindles eased into sight on either side of the bike: the catamarans. They were like streamlined rockets with outrider jet engines and a cockpit on either side. Both cockpits had heavy machine guns mounted next to them; two of these now swiveled to aim at Hayden's bike. One of the Gehellens gestured for him to turn around.

  He waved yes, and kept going.

  The square door was only yards away when one of the Gehellens fired a warning shot. The bullet pinged off the diamond wall. Hayden took his hands off the bike's handles and raised them surrender, while at the same time gripping the bike with his knees to steer it.

  Another warning shot and this time Hayden looked down to see a puncture in the bike's cowling, inches from Aubri's face.

  He reached to cut out the bike's engine and saw Carrier lean casually around the bike. There was a bang! loud in the sudden absence of engine noise and then Carrier was off the bike and spinning in mid-air and fired again.

  Both machine gunners were dead, with identical holes in the center of their forehead. Carrier was yanking Venera off her saddle; he aimed her at the black outline of the door and pushed himself the other way into open air. Hayden yelled a warning and saw that Aubri was drifting off her own saddle, unconscious. Quickly he took one foot out of its stirrup and lunged for Carrier. They locked hands and he pulled the larger man back just as both catamarans rolled over—trailing spirals of blood—to expose their pilots, and the pilots’ machine guns.

  Venera had found an indentation in the wall and jammed in the white cylinder she'd been
guarding. Both catamaran pilots opened up and bullets flew—sloppily as the recoil moved the gun platforms. A bullet hit Carrier's pistol and it shattered in his hand. He drew back, cursing.

  Hayden grabbed Aubri's shirt with one hand and with the other, the bright edge of a suddenly opening door in the diamond wall. He hauled Aubri and the bike into dazzling light to the ear-shattering accompaniment of machine gun fire.

  The sound cut off abruptly as the door shut and four humans and a bike tumbled onward into light.

  “Nothing? Nothing at all?” Chaison felt sick. The two bike pilots weren't looking much better; the crew had formed a half dome around them, and were looking stricken as well.

  “It's abandoned, sir. Shut down, except for one or two huts that look like security buildings. All the ships are gone—except the tugs, but...”

  “They weren't just out of sight, hidden somewhere else in the sargasso?”

  The two men looked at one another. They made identical shrugs. “Nowhere to put them, sir. We looked. Sir ... sir, they're gone.”

  Gone. A Falcon Formation dreadnaught and a fleet of new warships were on their way to Slipstream. Maybe they were there already. And Chaison Fanning had taken seven ships that might have helped defend his home, and frittered them away in a useless quest for an advantage that had now proven chimerical. He had lost.

  “Sir? What do we do now?”

  Chaison Fanning had no answer.

  17

  Cool air washed over Hayden's face. For a second he reveled in that, drawing in deep breaths and running his hands over his sweat-stained scalp. Then he turned to Aubri.

  “She's not been shot.” Carrier was already there, turning her over in midair like something he was inspecting at market. He was right, there was no blood.

  Was it the assassin-bug she carried inside her? Had Aubri crossed some invisible line, or begun to say something that had triggered it? For a moment Hayden was sure that such a thing had happened, and that she was dead.

  Then Carrier put his hand on her forehead. “Hot. Her pulse is a bit fast. She's not sweating; looks like she fainted from the heat.”

  Aubri coughed weakly and opened her eyes. “Oh, my head,” she murmured. She looked around herself in confusion. “How did we get back to—oh.” She pawed at the air, seeking something to hold onto. Hayden put out his hand and she took it, oriented herself upright with respect to the two men. “We're in Candesce.”

  “And we have a schedule to keep.” Venera was waiting impatiently at a nearby doorway. The military bike hung in the air next to her, popping and pinging as it cooled. Hayden counted bullet holes as he pulled Aubri past it; there were at least twenty. A glance told him that the fuel tanks hadn't been punctured, but he wasn't sure about the burners or fan.

  “Come on,” said Venera. “Mahallan, are you awake enough to do your job?”

  “Yes yes,” said Aubri peevishly. But Carrier shook his head.

  “She needs water and cold compresses,” he said. “We don't want her making mistakes at a crucial moment.”

  Venera drew an ornate watch out of her silk tunic. “We have an hour,” she said. “And I'm grudging you that.”

  They went to explore. It was easy for Hayden to tow Aubri, who seemed feverish and vague; if they'd been under gravity she might not have been able to walk.

  “Familiar enough design,” Venera said as they moved down a bright, white-walled corridor. The interior of what Aubri had called the visitors’ center was divided into numerous chambers and corridors, but only in a loose sort of way by walls and floors that generally did not quite meet. Instead of the enclosed boxes one found under gravity, here were rectangles of pastel-colored material that were suspended in mid-air to suggest rooms and floors without limiting mobility. In many places you could slip over or under a “wall” into the next room, or glide through a gap in the floor into a room “below.” Electric lights in many colors floated here and there, casting shadows that softened the edges of the space. This sort of plan was common in freefall houses and public institutions—but in those places you could always see the ropes or wires that kept the rectangles in place. Hayden could see no means of support for this place's walls.

  The rooms were in turn subdivided by screens into different functional areas: eating and cooking alcoves, entertainment centers, even shadowed nooks for sleeping. It didn't take them long to find fresh cold water for Aubri. She splashed it over herself and began to look more alert.

  “This place could house hundreds,” said Carrier. “Are you sure no one ever comes here? It all looks a bit too well kept.”

  Aubri laughed. “After maintaining the suns of Candesce, taking care of this place must be light work.”

  “But light work for whom?”

  “For what, you mean. Nothing we're likely to meet while we're here, Carrier. Nothing human.”

  He looked uneasy. “It's too empty in here. I don't like it.”

  Hayden searched the cupboards for something to help Aubri. To his surprise he found them well stocked, but the packages and boxes were lettered in an unfamiliar language.

  Aubri was shrugging off any more help anyway. “I'm feeling better, Venera. Let's do what we came to do.” She glided out of the kitchen alcove and slid through the loop of a large couch sling in the living area next door.

  Venera frowned at Aubri. “Well then, what are you waiting for? Where's the ... bridge, command center, or what have you?”

  Aubri gestured at a blank picture frame that took up much of the ceiling. “It's where ever you want it to be, Venera. Watch.” She spoke several words in a language Hayden had never heard before, and the picture frame swirled with sudden inner light. Then it seemed to open like a door or window, and Hayden found himself staring into the gleaming interior of Candesce.

  Lit by some magical un-light, Candesce's interior teemed with motion like the little creatures Hayden had seen once when he looked through a teacher's microscope. The suns themselves resembled diatoms, spiky and iridescent; though they were quiescent, all around them things like metal flowers were opening. Their petals fanned like the hands of mannered dancers, hundreds of feet wide, to reveal complex buds of machinery that must have hibernated in tungsten cocoons during the day's heat. Bright things poured out of them like seeds from a pod—or bikes from a hangar.

  Other things were moving too—long spindly gantries delicately picked crystalline cylinders out of the air and stuck them together end to end. Hayden glimpsed more machinery inside the cylinders.

  “What are they doing?” he asked.

  “Repairing,” said Aubri in a distracted tone. “Rebuilding. Don't look at anything too closely, you could break it.”

  Hayden sent her a worried glance; he noticed Carrier squinting at her as well. But she looked more alert and lucid than she had a few minutes ago. Hayden decided to let her strange comment go.

  He did want to examine this display of unfurling non-life. Hayden was looking for something, and after a few minutes he spotted it. One of the salvage ships from the principalities was nosing cautiously into the zone of mechanical activity. It flew a flag he'd never seen before, but he ignored that and its strange lines, and watched where it was going.

  “Well?” Venera was asking impatiently. “Where are the controls, Mahallan? Hadn't you better get started?”

  “Shush, Venera,” said Aubri. “I've already started.”

  Hayden had heard that all the suns in Virga made use of discarded components of Candesce. He wasn't sure what he was expecting to see, but was still surprised when the principality ship swung in close to one of the big translucent cylinders as it was being hoisted near a sun. Some complex exchange had just taken place between the cylinder and one of the flowers; a door had opened in the crystal and swarms of metal insects swirled between it and the “flower.” Now another hatch opened in the tessellated side of the sun, and another exchange began.

  As it did, the hangar doors of the principality ship flew open and men in sargas
so suits—star shapes at this distance—flung themselves into the stream of packages. They wrestled something away from its insectile courier; he could have sworn he'd seen the arcs and bands of that device before, in the half-constructed heart of his parents’ new sun.

  But wouldn't the metal bugs object? It seemed suicidal folly to try to steal from them. He waited for the swarm to turn and attack the men. After a long moment it began to happen: the remaining drones let go of their cargoes and turned towards the humans, who seemed oblivious to the threat.

  Get away, get away, he willed them, even as the steel insects opened their claws and flung themselves at the men.

  “Hayden, whatever you're doing, stop it,” said Aubri. She was waving her hand in front of his eyes.

  “Huh? I'm not doing—look at the ship, there!” He pointed.

  Aubri turned and looked toward the principality ship. “Oh. You didn't, did you?” She sounded disappointed. “Let's stop that.”

  At the last second, the metal insects veered away from the men. “Hayden, stop it,” said Aubri. “Look away, Hayden.” She grabbed his shoulder and spun him around.

  “What are you—”

  “Hayden, we're looking into a wish-mirror. Don't you know what that is?” Aubri saw the blank looks on three faces and sighed. “No, you don't. Sorry. Listen, the wish-mirrors are the control system for Candesce. Whatever you look at in the mirror, that thing will do what you imagine it doing—insofar as it's capable of it and only inside Candesce. Hayden, you disrupted the movement of those cargo handlers by worrying whether they would stop what they were doing.”

  Venera laughed. “You made the bugs attack those men! You're meaner than I thought.”

  “Hey, I didn't mean to—”

  “Wish-mirrors are sensitive,” said Aubri. “Maybe it would be better if none of you looked into it for a while. I have to figure out which component of Candesce to switch off. It could take me a few minutes.”

  The three natives of Virga left the couch and returned to the food-preparation area. “How are we going to know if she's done the job or not?” whispered Carrier. Venera rolled her eyes.