Sailing Bright Eternity

by Gregory Benford

  Patches of bare timestone shimmered there, opulent with smoldering glows. The esty here was tubular, dominated by this shiny snake river that wound through bluffs and forests. Downriver, the yawning bore of his circumscribed cosmos faded into ivory mist. He could see a sizable city there beside a shimmering bend. Behind him, uptime, he could make out the immense curve of the esty and its rich hills until perspective warped and blurred them. He was tempted to thumb up his binoculars to see—

  A thump against the skiff. Something heavy, moving.

  He held his breath. Normally the skiff moved feather-light, responding to the rub and press of the air’s very compression behind him as he voyaged down the silver river and thus accelerated through time.

  Irregular patches of bare timestone crust overhead gave forth smatterings of prickly light. He wished for a moment of darkness to hide him. Volcanoes of iridescence erupted from the land on the opposite curve of esty-tube. Light splintered down and beat on him. He bore the sudden blast of heat without a sound.

  You are acquitting yourself well

  came the whispery words from Shibo. The fragments of herself had begun calling to him. The small voice was soothing and plaintive and he knew he had to resist it.

  He concentrated on the sounds from below. He could not hear anything clearly because the timestone was splitting high above. It would not fall on him; local gravity was always down.

  This is an awful place. You have survived nobly.

  “Naysay. I kept my head down.”

  I could help you so much more if you would just give me functions I could use. You are lonely and need the—

  Answering her was a mistake. She went on and on and he had to concentrate to push her down. She had tried before to mutiny, take control of himself, a traitor Personality. For that there was no forgiveness.

  She fought him with tiny cries. He thought of another woman, of Besen, of making love to her, skin smooth and creamy. He longed to see Besen again. That helped. The memory of her swamped Shibo’s wracked sobs.

  Smooth skin . . . The face of the water was also smooth . . . and deceptive.

  Everything here was dangerous. The exploding timestone came from monstrous collisions between unknown energies, distant flares of the Eater, vast meaningless violence beyond human ken. But the mechs were here, too, and he suspected everything now. He had seen them in the distance. They seemed at a disadvantage here in this moist tunnel-like Lane. Their wrecked bodies sometimes floated by him on the river. But they kept coming; they always had.

  Something worried the water’s surface.

  He sat up and reached for his paddle and a skinny thing shot out of the water and snapped past his head. He ducked and slapped the tendril with his paddle. A knobby angular wedge with slitted yellow eyes heaved up from the wrinkled water. It smoked acrid green, out of its metal element, and struck at him again. He swung the paddle. It caught the tendril and sliced through.

  The mercury-beast bleated and splashed and was gone. He dug into the water with the paddle—half its blade sheared cleanly off—and thrust hard. Splashing behind.

  He labored into deeper water. The green fumes swirled away. When the currents calmed he veered toward shore. The big-jawed predator could snap him from the surface in an instant, crunch his skiff in two, if it could extend out of the low-running streams of silver-gray mercury and ruddy bromium. A turbulent swell had brought it up, and might again.

  His arms burned and his breath rasped well before the prow ran aground. Hurriedly he splashed ashore, tugging a frayed rope. He got the skiff up onto a mud flat and into a copse and slid it far back to hide it among leafy branches.

  Weakly he flopped down and fetched forth some stringy dried blue meat to quiet the rumble in his stomach. His systems were mostly dead now, crapped out in his long flight. Servos barely ran in his knees and arms. His weapons had discharged and the rest were unreliable. They were designed to bring down mechs anyway and useless for hunting. He had started eating meat when he got really hungry and was somewhat ashamed to admit that he liked it. Principle melted before the flame of necessity.

  He peered at dense forest and patchy mud flats and decided to explore a little. The silent power of the river insulated a lonely skiff from the rhythms of land and made coasting downstream and downtime natural, silkily inevitable. He would learn nothing that way, though.

  He walked upshore, into the silent press of time that felt at first like a mild summer’s breeze but drained the energy of anyone who worked against it. As he went he eyed the profusion of stalks and trunks and tangled blue-green masses that crouched close to the river’s edge like something waiting. It had been a long while since he had fled the destruction of the giant pyramid mountain and the Walmsley man from Family Brit. He had been happy to find this strange Lane with its silver river and to ease down it, following timelines that flowed nearer the black hole. He had learned some of the culture and had begun to like the soft humanity of it, its archaic charm.

  No signs of people. He kept up a good pace and became distracted and so was unprepared. A short man with a duckbill blunderbuss stepped from behind a massive tree trunk and just grinned.

  “What’s the name?” the man asked, spitting first.

  “Toby.”

  “Walking upriver?”

  Better to skirt the question than to lie. “Looking for food.”

  “Find any?”

  “Hardly had a chance to.”

  “Couldn’ta come far. Big storm just downstream from here.” The man grinned broadly, showing brown teeth, lips thin and bloodless. “I saw it pull a man’s arms off.”

  So he knew Toby couldn’t have just strolled here from downstream. Toby said casually, “I walked down from the point, the one with the big old dead tree.”

  “I know that place. Plenty berries and footfruit there. Why come lookin’ here?”

  “I heard there’s a big city this way.”

  “More like a town, kid. Me, I think you oughta stay out here in the wild with us.”

  “Who’s ‘us’?”

  “Some fellas.” The man’s fixed grin soured at the edges.

  “I got to be getting on, mister.”

  “This baby here says you got fresh business.” He displayed the blunderbuss as though he had invented it.

  “I got no money.”

  “Don’t want or need money. Your kind, big and fresh, my friends will sure enjoy seeing you.”

  He gestured with the blunderbuss for Toby to walk. Toby saw no easy way to get around the big weapon so he strode off, the man following at a cautious distance.

  The blunderbuss was in fact the ornate fruit of a tree Toby had once seen. The weapons grew as hard pods on the slick-barked trees and had to be sawed off when they swelled to maturity. This one had a flange that opened into a gnarled ball and then flared farther into the butt—all part of the living weapon. If stuck butt-down in rich soil, with water and daylight, it grew cartridges for the gun. From the size of the butt he guessed that this was a full-grown weapon and would carry plenty of shots.

  He stumbled through a tangle of knife grasses, hearing the man snicker at his awkwardness, and then came to a pink clay path. Plainly this man planned to bring him to some kind of mean-spirited reception. Simple thieving, or a spot of buggery—these he had heard of and even witnessed. But the man’s rapt, hot-eyed gaze spoke of more, some vice from the unknown swamp of adulthood.

  What should he do? His mind churned fruitlessly.

  Toby’s breath rasped and quickened as he took his time on the steepening path. Like most footways, this one moved nearly straight away from the river, and thus a traveler suffered neither the chilly press of uptime nor the nauseating slide of downtime. Toby judged the path would probably rise into the dry-brown foothills ahead. Insects hung and buzzed in the stillness of slumberous, sliding moments. A few bit.

  He thought furiously. They passed through a verdant, hummocky field and then up ahead around a sharp bend he saw, just a fe
w steps beyond, a deep shiny iron-gray stream that gurgled down toward the river, and a dead muskbat that lay in the gummy clay path.

  A muskbat never smells grand and this one, at least a day dead, filled the air with a sharp reek.

  Toby gave no sign, just held his breath. The stream murmured beside him. Its weak time-churn unsteadied his step only a little. A fallen branch and windstorm debris lay just a bit beyond the muskbat’s cracked and oozing blue-black skin.

  He stepped straight over the muskbat and three steps more. As he turned the man breathed in the repulsive tang and his swarthy face contorted. The man drew back, foot in midair, and the blunderbuss wavered away.

  Toby snatched up the branch. Without meaning to he sucked in the putrid fumes. He had to clench his throat tight to stop his stomach from betraying him. He leaped at the man. In midair he swung the branch, wood seeking wood, and felt a sharp jolt as he connected.

  “Ah!” the man cried in pain. The blunderbuss sprang into the air and tumbled crazily into the stream—

  —which dissolved the gun with a stinging hiss and explosive puff of fragrant orange steam. The man gaped at this, at Toby—and took a step back.

  “Now you,” Toby said because he could think of nothing else.

  He got the words out at his lowest bass register. With a devouring metal rivulet nearby, any wrestling could bring disintegrating death in a flicker. Toby felt his knees turn to water, his heart jump into his throat.

  The man fled. Scampered away with a little hoarse cry.

  Toby blinked in surprise and then beat his own retreat, to escape the virulent muskbat fumes. He stopped at the edge of a viny tangle and looked back at the stream.

  His chest filled with sudden pride. He had faced down a full-grown man. He!

  Only later did he realize that the man was legitimately more frightened than Toby was—for he faced a wild-eyed stranger of some muscle, ungainly but armed with a fair-sized club. So the man had prudently escaped, his dirty shirt tail flapping like a harrying rebuke behind him.

  TWO

  Confusion Winds

  Toby skirted away from the foothills, in case the swarthy man came back with his friends. He headed downstream, marching until sleep overcame him. By keeping a good long distance from the river he hoped to avoid the time-storm the man had mentioned—assuming it wasn’t a lie.

  The river was always within view from any fair-sized rise, since the land curved up toward the territories overhead. A sheen of clear water blended with the ruddy mud flats at this distance, so that Toby could barely pick out the dabs of silver and tin-gray that spoke of deadly undercurrents.

  He had arisen and found some mealy brush fruit for breakfast and had set off again when he felt a prickling at the nape of his neck. A ripple passed by. It pinched his chest and stung his eyes. Hollow booms volleyed through the layered air.

  He looked up. Across the misty expanse he could make out the far side of the esty. It was a clotted terrain of hills and slumped valleys, thick with a rainbow’s wonder of plant life, dappled lakes, snaky streams—all tributaries to the one great river. As he watched the overhead arch compressed, like an accordion he had seen an old lady playing once—and then the squeezing struck him as well. Clutched his ribs, strained at his neck and ankles as though trying to pull him apart. Trees creaked, teetered, and one old black one crashed over nearby. He lay on moist, fragrant humus where he had fallen and watched the massive constriction inch its way downstream, a compression wave passing and then relaxing, like the digesting spasm of a great beast. Strata groaned, rocks shattered. A final peal like a giant’s hammer rolled over the leafy canopy.

  As he watched it proceed he saw through his binoculars for the first time the spires of the city, and saw one tumble in a glimmering instant as the great wave passed. Somehow he had thought of cities—or towns, as the man had said, a word strange to Toby—as grand places free of the rub of raw nature, invulnerable.

  He moved on quickly. A purple radiance played amidst the ripe forest, shed by a big patch of raw fresh timestone beside a shiny lake, far away. Thoughts of the city possessed him, ideas of how to track his father, so he forgot the time-storm.

  At first he felt a wrenching in the pit of his stomach. Then the humid air warped, perverting perspectives, and confusion rode the winds.

  His feet refused to land where he directed them unless he kept constant attention, his narrowed eyes holding the errant limbs continually in view. Cordwood-heavy, his arms gained and lost weight as they swung. To turn his head without planning first was to risk a fall. He labored on, panting. Hours oozed past. He ate, napped, kept on. The air sucked strength from muscles and sent itchy traceries playing on his skin.

  The whispering tendrils of stupefaction left him as he angled toward the city. He sagged with fatigue. Three spires remained ahead, whitewash-bright, the most palatial place he had ever seen. Houses of pale polished wood were lined up neat and sure beside rock-roads laid arrow-straight with even the slate slabs cut square and true.

  These streets thronged with more people than Toby could count. Ladies in finery stepping gingerly over horse dung, coarse frolickers lurching against walls, tradesmen elephantine and jolly, foul-witted quarrelers, prodigious braggarts, red-faced hawkers of everything from sweets to saws. All swarming like busybody insects and abuzz with talk.

  To Toby it was like trying to take a drink from a waterfall. He wandered the gridded streets, acutely conscious of his ragged clothes and slouch hat. Baggy trousers covered his field gear. He drew some odd looks.

  This whole Lane seemed devoted to the comforts of some human past he could not quite fathom. His Isaac Aspect broke in,

  This is a deliberate echo of an ancient human culture. I cannot place it, but obviously it is pre-Chandelier. Their technology is mannered and cherished for that fact. Together with the river, it seems a sort of refuge for some. I hypothesize—

  “I’d appreciate advice on how to get out of this Lane plenty more than your theorizing.” Toby had assigned Isaac the task of searching all files in his Aspect-space, and he had hoped for more than this.

  It lies quite within the realm of human sociology to manifest nostalgia on such a scale. This Lane seems to run on varying time senses because of extreme esty gradients, and the human reaction has been to cling to constancy. Understandable and—

  “Quiet.” He stuffed the Aspect back in its hole and sought the one thing he knew, the river.

  Along the big stone quay men loafed in the rising, insect-thronged heat. They slouched in split-bottomed chairs tilted back to the point of seeming dynamical impossibility, chins on chests, hats tipped down over drowsy eyes. A six-legged sow and her brood grunted by, doing a good business in droppings from split crates.

  Beyond this slow scene lay the river, lit by the fitful radiance of three overhead timestone patches. Toby took off his pack and sat on a wharf railing and looked at the river’s ceaseless undulation, broken by shards of raw silver that broke the surface, fumed, and were gone.

  “Lookin’ for work?”

  The voice was rough. It belonged to a young man somewhat older than Toby and short, like everyone here. Broad shoulders burst his crosshatched shirt. But the eyes were dreamy, warm.

  “Might be.” He would need money here.

  “Got some unloadin’ to do. Never ’nuff hands.” The young man held out a broad palm. They shook. “Name’s Stan.”

  “Mine’s Toby. Heavy stuff?”

  “Moderate. We got droners to help.”

  Stan jabbed a thumb at a line of five slumped figures seated along the jetty. Toby had seen these before, only upriver they were called Zoms. They all sat the same way, legs sprawled out in front, arms slack, weight on the lower spine at a steep angle. No man could sit in that manner for long. Zoms didn’t seem to mind. Just about anything seemed better than being dead.

  “You new?” Stan asked, squatting down beside Toby and scribbling something on a clipboard with a pencil stub.

 
“Just came in.”

  “Raft?”

  “Skiff. Landed up above that storm.”

  Stan whistled. “And walked around? Long way. That ripple knock you flat?”

  “Tried to.”

  “Be a lotta trouble to get back to your skiff.”

  “I might just push on down.”

  “Really?” Stan brightened. “How far you come?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Angel’s Point? Rockport?”

  “I heard of them. Saw Alberts but it was foggy.”

  “You’re from above Rockport? And just a kid?”

  “I’m older than I look,” Toby said stiffly.

  “You do have a funny accent.”

  Toby gritted his teeth. “So do you, to my ear.”

  “I thought, comin’ this far downtime, you’d get sick, go crazy, or something.” Stan seemed truly impressed, his eyes wide.

  “I didn’t just shoot down.” It would be dumb to get into his past. People along the river didn’t care very much for outsiders. “I stopped some to . . . explore.”

  “For what?”

  Toby shifted uneasily. He shouldn’t have said anything. The less people knew about you, the less they could use. “Treasure.”

  “Like hydrogen? Big market for hydrogen chunks here.”

  “No, more like—” Toby struggled to think of something that made sense. “Jewels. Ancient rubies and all.”

  “No foolin’? I’ve never seen any.”

  “They’re rare. Left over from the olden lords and ladies.”

  Stan opened his mouth and stuck his tongue up into his front teeth in an expression of intense thought. “Uh . . . Who were they?”

  “Primeval people. Ones from waaay uptime. They were so rich then, cause there were so few of them, that the sapphires and gold just dripped off their wrists and necks.”

  Wide-eyed now. “Earnest?”