by Tim Dennis
For the first time in two hundred years Farm Ark Four unfurled its kilometer-wide Particle Flux Net, forming it into a great upturned dish attached at its center at F'Ark 4's hub. A moment later the main engine sputtered into life, breaking the former Ark free from Legong while Nudgers located around the spinning torus directed it towards the Eden-Rip.
"Aren't we waiting for Krykowfert?" Mallick asked.
Feric rested her back, letting the gentle acceleration hold her against the wall. A dozen S.I. Guards sat at control monitors, strapped into chairs firmly attached to the floor. Now a pilothouse on a grand scale, a week ago the room had been an empty, forgotten elevator nexus in a disused sector of a Farm Ark operating at half-production.
"He's on his way." She said. "He'll meet us at the Eden Rip."
"And then take me back to Legong, right?"
Feric looked over at the old revolutionary, then glanced at the small images of the uncontrolled Earth-Rip. Mallick swallowed hard and clenched his teeth.
In other sectors, the fallow open spaces of F'Ark 4 stretched hundreds of meters, wrapping around the inside of the torus. Within these wide, open spaces, the unexpected movement of the ship slung thousands of confused Legongs to the dirt. A moment before, the spin of the orbiting farm provided an up and down. The acceleration of first thrust created a 'backwards,' towards which the unprepared tumbled.
It would have been a comic scene, had it been part of a Digest Entertainment, but it was real, people were being hurt, and Feric needed to do something about it. The Aide leaning against the wall beside her assembled an array of small images for her.
"Are they organized?" Feric asked, looking at the several large gatherings of settlers.
"I don't know, Commander. The original load plan was abandoned when you advanced the schedule."
The ship had space for a hundred thousand, if only for a short duration. There had only been time to gather fifteen or twenty thousand, and no time at all to prepare them for the move. Even now, laden K-ships were flying up from the surface, but opening the main engine left nowhere on the hub for them to dock. Feric turned away from the ships, back to her passengers.
"Make a broadcast, tell them they're on their own for the next few hours. They have to create their own manifest and locate medical people among themselves. If the complaints get too loud open false-windows, show them Legong."
The Aide dipped into his implant, passing along the appropriate orders to subordinates. Feric returned her attention to the pilot station. A projection of the great ship's trajectory intersected the Eden-Rip, currently a tiny wobbling circle of light. Someone had transferred the small image of the out-of-control Earth-Rip to the large space at the end of the room.
"Shut that off." She said.
The gentle acceleration of first thrust grew, making the back wall more of a floor. Like herself, thousands of Legongs were pinched into the corner of whatever room, hall or bean field they were left in. Uncomfortable for an experienced traveler, quite frightening for a newbie.
Relying on the thrust of engines not fired for hundreds of years, her ship was leaving the protection of Legong's magnetic field, towards a Rip that may not open wide enough to accept her. Despite this, it was the planet below that looked fragile. A dusty ball of rock pocked by flying boulders, and now menaced by an unrestrained, flapping sheet of elsewhere. She and Krykowfert had expected years to execute the transfer. They'd planned for open debate, voluntary sign-ups and even trade between the new world and those who'd stayed behind. But now, instead of several hundred thousand colonists slowly migrating to well-established settlements, they'd shifted only a few tens of thousands. Misfits, rebels, and risk-takers. Neuro-aberrants and their families. Sometimes their protesting neighbors. And a few pets. Most had no idea why they were there or where they were going.
The Council, busily involved in the battle for the Rip, found time to shout commands at Feric.
'on what authority'
'you have no right'
'where are you going?'
Feric ignored them, leaving them to spin along in their never-changing orbit, far enough from Legong to avoid the daily trials of its citizens, close enough to share its shielding from meteors and cosmic rays.
"For the sake of Turn-Around man, let them close it!" Krykowfert shouted in panic.
He held his own ship at a distance from Councilor Six's Legong-side Rip Command Center, but close enough for a direct implant-connection. The Frame had long since shattered and the Rip spun wildly, stretching ever further across Legong's orbit. Sputties had ceased coming through the Rip, each instead opening its own tiny hole between Legong space and Earth's. A thousand Sputties popped through and a thousand explosive projectiles met them. From a hundred kilometers away, the sheepish Lieutenant debated.
"Councilor Six gave very clear orders, Sir. We're not to allow any Earth ships into Legong space."
"Can't you see, man? It's over. You're not in control of that Rip. If you don't let Earth close it-" Krykowfert stopped in mid-sentence. He turned to his crew. "Give me a read on those stars."
Calmly but quickly, two members of Krykowfert's personal team recorded the star field showing through the Rip. "That's not Earth-space Sir."
"They've already closed it." Krykowfert said aloud.
"No Sir," added the embattled Council Guard Lieutenant. The f'window remained stable and clear as the Lieutenant's image crackled and faded. "We've successfully held them off."
"They closed their side." Krykowfert yelled back at him. "That's not Earth-space, it's a window onto another place, it's the back-side of the Rip."
Before the Lieutenant could respond the Rip tore across his fleet and then shrunk back, destroying several ships and splitting the remaining force in two, one half of which disappeared through the Rip, perhaps into another galaxy, perhaps only a few parsecs away. Krykowfert turned to his crew.
"Take us in, I need to assume direct control myself."
"Sir, F'Ark 4 has left orbit." Said his crew, "Feric is ordering us to the Eden Rip."
"Feric isn't your boss!" As he spoke the words he remembered his own orders, passing complete control of the evacuation to her. It was his last official order as Director. "Yes, yes. Of course. You're right."
He shut off the f'window and quietly took a seat at the rear of the cabin. His crew hesitated, expecting greater argument, then turned their attention to their duty. With his crew occupied, Krykowfert casually stood up, walked to the lower hatch, and climbed down to the Capsule at the bottom of the ship. Before they knew he'd left, Krykowfert had the Capsule sealed. A moment later he launched. He was instantly flooded with implant calls.
"There are K-ships on the Council's Command Center." Krykowfert responded. "I'll have the Earth Rip closed and be at the Eden Rip before you are," and with that he canceled the implant link and thrusted towards the Lieutenant's ship.
His crew followed, but without a plan. The engineers hadn't expected the need to re-capture a fleeing Drop-Capsule. Arriving at the Council's Command Center at the same time, Krykowfert maneuvered his ship up to a docking hatch. With no hangar available to them, the crew in the main body of his ship was frustrated, left to hover beside the hulking vessel with no means of boarding.
Krykowfert found the Lieutenant, a full staff, and Councilor Five numbly watching as wave after wave of Sputties popped into Legong space, slowly overwhelming a fleet already weakened by the flailing, expanding rim of the Rip.
"Tell them!" He yelled at Five. "Disengage, let them close it!"
"They're attacking." Five said. "Six was right, they're attacking."
"They're only trying to close the Rip!"
The Lieutenant looked back and forth between the two as his staff frantically adjusted failing strategies and tactics. Krykowfert re-opened his implant link in an attempt to take control of communications but was himself overpowered by insistent messages from Feric's entire Command, insisting that he return to the Eden Rip immediately. He shook away the connections an
d grabbed Five by the shoulders.
"Come with me, now. This fleet will be destroyed, this ship will be destroyed. In a few days, weeks maybe, we can re-establish the Rip from the Eden side. You'll be needed on Legong."
"I can't leave the Command." Said Five.
"Look out there! In a few minutes there will be nothing left to command!"
Five didn't respond, numbed by a situation she'd never trained for. Krykowfert himself was almost crippled by the messages forced into his brain by Feric. Without another word he left the room, acknowledged the order from Feric and queried the ship itself on the location of its K-Ship hangar. Within minutes he'd found it. Smaller than his own, it held only three. He tried once again to connect with Five, convince her to leave. Getting no response, he climbed into the little K-ship, ordered the hangar doors open and flew the ship out.
His former crew was gone and a quick check of the Earth Rip status showed the Sputties had turned the tide. But the Rip was too big. Instead of closing it the Sputties were stretching it, expanding it beyond the Legong-shattering dimensions it already possessed to a neatly rotating orbit-spanning almond-shaped hole in space. With one quick flip the Rip engulfed the entirety of Legong, swinging wide and fizzling as it expanded further, taking Legong's Sun away before breaking into a billion fading points of light.
Krykowfert guided Councilor Five's little K-ship down to Legong's surface. He avoided settlements, choosing instead a high alpine valley in an uncolonized range of mountains. The sky was quiet now, filled with unfamiliar stars. The flashes of dying meteors continued, but, Krykowfert surmised, those would diminish over time. Legong was no longer in Legong-space. The Rip had sent it elsewhere.
A few meters away the land raised to a blunt, rounded mound, and Krykowfert left the ship, climbing up the mound to gaze unfiltered at the strange stars making up this foreign sky. For forty years he'd searched those stars, for thirty he'd invented and built the tools, for five he'd poked holes in space. Finally he'd found it, the planet his ancestors had aimed for, the planet his forebears had missed, the safe, comfortable, terra-formed home created for this human colony lost-in-space. In a sense he'd succeeded. Feric's ship, assuming she'd made it through, would bring Eden's population to fifty thousand, a sustainable size by any calculation. But it would have been nice, Krykowfert thought, if it had been fifty thousand and one.
52
Nafasi poured tea for ToEv and Trendle and worried about his daughter. An entire world was too much for one person to be responsible for. Next time they would have to work it differently.
Gabrile and her team monitored it all from the lanai. For her, and everyone else on Earth, it had been over in minutes. The Drop-Capsules, the Transports, Destroyers and Six's command ship, all gone.
However, closing the Rip from one side only closed one side. Earth didn't want Legong destroyed, in fact quite the opposite. Gabrile and ToEv believed in Krykowfert, they all held high hopes for the future of the Legong/Eden colony. But Legong resisted, so the Sputties saved Earth. By the time they'd pushed through to Legong space in large enough numbers, it was too late. The only option to the total destruction of Legong was to send it, and its sun, through the wild Rip. Those Sputties that survived recycled their fallen comrades and returned to Earth-space.
"Do we send them back into Legong space?" Trendle asked, sipping from his cup.
"Legong isn't in Legong-space." Gabrile replied. She didn't want tea.
"No, but there are ships in the outer system," ToEv added, "and Krykowfert's Eden-Rip should be recoverable."
Gabrile pulled a wisp of green smoke from the little ball on the table. "We didn't have sputties in the region of the Eden-Rip and your ship doesn't remember." She said.
They all sat quietly. Gabrile tapped rhythmically on the table, slowly shaking her head and breathing heavily. Nafasi felt her stress deeply.
"So we don't know where Eden is..." ToEv stated.
"And we don't know where Legong went." Gabrile added.
"Surely," Gwirionedd said, "some Sputties were caught in the Rip with Legong. If they're able to locate Earth, we'll get the fix from them."
That settled the immediate issue for the moment. Gabrile drew her legs up to her chest and rocked back in her chair. The others sipped their drinks and sat with their own thoughts. After a suitable interval, ToEv brought up a new subject.
"I believe Myles said they recycle their corpses. Perhaps this would be a fitting resolution, we could use them to fertilize the desert they tried to settle. Perhaps plant a garden. Do we have a final tally?"
Trendle manipulated the smoky ribbons of color as he spoke. "Forty-two thousand, eight hundred and sixteen bodies have been recovered from Earth orbit. We believe there may have been close to a hundred thousand in the arc-ships at the Rip, but it is unclear at this point whether they were all in Earth space or if some were in Legong."
Chanly broke in. "And if the planet survived, and the incident leads to unrest, we can expect them to turn on themselves. That too will create casualties."
Gabrile snorted, expressing disgust for the stupid Legongs while despairing over their destruction. Nafasi went to her, held her and tried to sooth her. "There wasn't time," he said. "They achieved the Rip, Krykowfert was on the brink of cracking the navigation problem." Gabrile sank into his embrace, letting herself be a child for just a few minutes.
"They're too unpredictable," she lamented. "They don't act in self-interest. They're nothing but a bi-cameral mass of mirror-neurons. Their brains just aren't capable of independent thought. It's like it hurts them to even try." ToEv started to speak, Gabrile cut him off. "I’m done with it." She walked out of the lanai onto the beach. The sun was low in the sky and a cooling breeze came inshore from the lake.
Nafasi went back into the kitchen, returning presently with a light meal for them all to share. He put a plate aside for Gabrile and the rest of them ate in silence. The sun set, the air cooled, Gwirionedd and Chanly sat on the sofa, each laying a head on ToEv's thigh. Nafasi sat alone, watching Gabrile on the beach. She dug at the sand with her toes, raising a rampart protecting herself from the waves. She plopped down in her little fort and wrapped her arms around her knees.
A bubble-chair landed up the beach, near the huts. Sach climbed out and went down to Gabrile. "It's comforting." She said. Gabrile looked up. "The night sky, like a blanket, familiar stars, the milky way."
"If anyone else tries to come," Gabrile said, "people with better weapons, more advanced Ripping, or Holing. It won't be a friendly sky then."
"Myles loved Earth," Sach said. "He felt at home here. He told me so. But these aren't his stars. He'll never see them again, will he, his stars?"
53
Ideas and concepts floated freely in the void and when the words finally came they seemed normal, as if they'd always been.
Smell.
The word had a meaning representing a fragment of a concept from the floating.
What's a smell?
A smell. A thing. Not a thing, a something. You feel it. I think.
What's a feel?
It's a... I don't know. I did know.
You're talking nonsense.
Talking makes sound that you hear.
Do you feel hears?
No, it's 'do you hear things?'
Things like feels?
Feels aren't things, they're somethings.
The silence continued forever, then the feels started again, far in the past.
Is it different now than before?
You mean does it feel different?
I think it IS different. Something moved.
I felt it. It tingles.
It tingled for a very long time, or not. After the tingling came the movement. Maybe before. Not true movement, the feeling of movement, the knowing of movement.
It happens first in one place then in another.
Sides. You feel it on one side, then the other.
Sides. Yes. And top. And bottom.
Yes. Shape, size, dimension, duration. Time.
The tingling gave way to twinges and sharp little pains. Then nothing at all.
Are you I? Or me?
We could be 'us.'
The movement, the twinges. Each only happens once. I think we are a single me.
Sounds came as gentle, soft globs; and smells, although not unpleasant, were peculiar and constantly changing. The pain came back, alternating with nothingness.
Light alternated with dark many times, and then the shadows arrived.
There. It is more dark, there.
Yes. There is more dark at some times than others.
I'm glad you're here, even if you are just me.
Yes. Me too.
The movement of the shadows were predictable and regular. There were also many sounds. The sounds made by the shadows were always of the same range of tones, and from one shadow to another the tone ranges varied.
I call that one 'ping.' Its sounds are in a high range, but they're soft, not sharp like 'bang.'
Two shadows moved in concert while the sounds continued. One set low and vibrating, the other high and grating.
The shadows varied in intensity, taking a form that was not evident previously. The next day the forms were more distinct, and on the next they included shades of color, pinks, browns, yellows and whites. At one end the colors formed complex shapes, two bright white spots and a flapping, pinkish strip separated by flashes of white.
That's a face.
"His eyes are open." Said one of the shadows.
"Yes." Said another. "Been like that a few days. But this neural activity is new. I think he's coming out of it."
The sounds are coming from those faces. Those are people.
Are we people?
54
Myles sat on the edge of the bed. With his legs fully relaxed the balls of his feet rested gently on the wooden floorboards. He leaned forward slightly, letting his heels come down and take some of his body weight.
