Sailing Bright Eternity

by Gregory Benford

  “They had so much, it was like the dust in the road to them. Sometimes when they got bored, the ladies’d snatch up a whole gob of jewels, their very finest, all glittery and ripe, and they’d stick them all over some of those big hats they wore. Come a flood, people would drown and those jewel-fat hats would come downtime.”

  “Hats?” Open-mouthed wonder.

  An airy wave of his hand. “Not the slouch hats we wear down here. I’m talkin’ big boomer hats, made of, well, hydrogen itself.”

  “Hydro—” Stan stopped, a look of puzzlement washing across his face, and Toby saw that he had to cover that one.

  “See, those prehistoric days, hydrogen was even lighter than it is today. So they wore it. The very finest of people weaved it into fancy vests and collars and hats.”

  A doubtful scowl. “I never saw anybody . . .”

  “Well, see now, that’s just the thing. My point exactly. Those olden ladies and officers, they wore out all the hydrogen. That’s why it’s worth so much today.”

  Stan’s mouth made an awestruck O. “That’s wondrous, plain wondrous. I mean, I knew hydrogen was the lightest metal. Strongest, too. No puzzlement it’s what every big contractor and engine-builder wants, only can’t get. But—” he looked sharply at Toby—“how come you know?”

  “How come a kid knows?” Might as well feed him back that remark. “Because uptime, we’re closer to the archaic ages. We look out for those hydrogen hats that came down the river and wash up.”

  Stan frowned. “Then why’d you come down here?”

  For an instant Toby had the sick feeling that he was caught out. The whole story was going to blow up on him. He would lose this job and go hungry.

  Then he blinked and said, “Uptime people already got the hats that came ashore there. It’s the ones that got past them that I’m after.”

  “Aaahhh . . .” Stan liked this and at once began to shoot out questions about the grand hats and treasure hunting, how Toby did it, what he’d found, and so on. It was a relief when somebody called, “Induction ship!” and the sleepy quay came to life.

  THREE

  The Zom

  The big white ship seemed to Toby to snap into existence, bright and trim and sharp as it bore down upon them. It cut the river, curling water like a foamy shield, sending gobbets of iron-gray liquid metal spraying before it.

  It was a three-decker with gingerbread railings and a pyramid-shaped pilothouse perched atop. Large, thick disks dominated each side, humming loudly as it decelerated. Only these induction disks, which had to cast their field lines deep into the river and thrust the great boat forward, were untouched by the eternal habit of ornamentation. Curlicues trickled down each stanchion. Pillars had to be crowned with ancient scrollwork, the fly bridge carried sculptures of succoring angels, davits and booms and mastheads wore stubby golden helmets.

  Passengers lined the ornate railings as the boat slowed, foam leaped in the air, and backwash splashed about the stone quay. A whistle sounded eerily and deck hands threw across thick ropes.

  Stan caught one and looped it expertly about a stay. “Come on!”

  Crowds had coagulated from somewhere, seeming to condense out of the humidity onto the jetty and quay. A hubbub engulfed the induction ship. Crates and bales descended on crane cables. Wagons rumbled forth to take them and Toby found himself in a gang of Zoms, tugging and wrestling the bulky masses. Crowds yawped and hailed and bargained with vortex energy all around.

  The Zoms followed Stan’s orders sluggishly, their mouths popping open as they strained, drool running down onto their chests. These were corpses kindled back to life quite recently, and so still strong, though growing listless. Zoms were mostly men, since they were harvested for heavy manual labor. But a hefty woman labored next to Toby and between loads she put her hand on his leg, directly and simply, and then slipped her fingers around to cup his balls.

  Toby jerked away, her reek biting in his nostrils. He slapped her hard. Zoms hungered for life. They knew that they would wither, dwindling into torpid befuddlement, within months. The heavy woman shook her head, then leered at him and felt his ass. He backed away from her, shivering.

  And bumped into a shabby Zom man who turned sluggishly and mumbled, “Toby. Toby.”

  Stunned, he peered into the filmed eyes and slack mouth. Parchment skin stretched over stark promontories of the wrecked face. Memories stirred. Some faint echo in the cheekbones? The sharp nose?

  “Toby . . . I am . . . father . . .”

  “No!” Toby cried.

  “Toby . . . came here . . . time . . .”

  The Zom reached unsteadily for his shoulder. It was in the tottering last stages of its second life, the black mysteries’ energy now seeping from it.

  “You’re not my father! Get away.”

  The Zom gaped, blinked, reached again.

  “No!” Toby pushed the Zom hard and it went down. It made no attempt to catch itself and landed in a sprawl of limbs. It lay inert, its eyes filmed.

  “Hey, it botherin’ you?” Stan asked.

  “Just, they just get to me, is all.”

  “These’re made in Resurrection City, I heard.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “’Nother Lane entire. They knock off copies from raw stock.”

  “From dead people?”

  “Don’t have to be. Got a mind-copy, just fast-grow a template, marry them up—zingo, you got cheap labor galore.”

  Toby studied the slack-jawed face and resolved that this Zom could not possibly be his father. The false Abraham had fooled him for a moment but not this thing, no. There was really no resemblance at all, now that he took a close and objective scrutiny.

  “Let it lay there,” Stan said dismissively. “We got work to do.”

  It was so far gone Toby could not tell if this was some copy from the Restorer, which he supposed was what Stan meant by Resurrection City, or in fact the true Killeen, somehow aged in the esty.

  So he put the matter out of his mind. He would treat this Zom as a copy, like that one of his grandfather back in the field hospital. He decided this and thought of it no more. It did not occur to him that he could not have done this only a few years before.

  The rest of the unloading Toby helped carry out without once looking toward the crumpled form. Ladies stepped gingerly over the Zom and a passing man kicked it, all without provoking reaction.

  Sweat was trickling into his eyebrows and so he did not see the mechs at first. “Heyso!” someone called. Toby looked up—

  —into an onrushing sleek snout. Two others followed. They banked in the soft air and their shock wave slammed down onto the docks. People ran all whichways but Toby stood still, watching the silvery craft climb up the air. They pitched and yawed to no apparent purpose, angling out over the shore.

  “Looking,” Stan said. “Been here before.”

  “These same ones?” Toby asked.

  “Smaller last time.”

  The craft banked and glided now, slower and more careful as they prowled over the town. Toby still did not move. Mechs could pick up servos working. Stan gave him a puzzled look and cautiously got down behind some bales of sticky-grass.

  They were coming back. Calls trilled in his receptors. “Bishops!” he whispered. He could pick out Cermo, Jocelyn, others. So the mechs had gotten the Family codes. He killed his inboards, in case some vagrant signal might get out in response.

  They came right overhead. The moment passed with agonizing slowness and for a crazy instant he thought they must have stopped dead high above him. Then they were out over the river and he could start breathing again.

  Just as he did, somebody shot at the mechs. It was a reasonably sophisticated weapon, Toby could tell, because it left virtually no detectable backtrail. Probably it used some sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum that Bishops could not sense.

  The mechs could. The shot came from somewhere downstream and they rushed that way. It had done them no harm that Toby
could see. They fired once, all three together. Someone screamed. The mechs moved off and the screaming stopped. Whoever had died had been foolish. Toby had not for a moment considered trying to help them against mechs of such a caliber. That he had learned as a boy.

  “They did that ’fore, too,” Stan said. He stood up from behind the bale and tried to make out as if he had not been there.

  “Get anybody?”

  “Not that I heard.”

  “Which way did they go then?”

  “Just like these—” Stan pointed as the three leveled out and accelerated. “Downtime.”

  “Always?”

  “Certain. After somebody, I ’spect.”

  And trying to sucker Bishops in, too, Toby thought. Maybe him. Or maybe it meant there were Bishops about.

  They went downriver. Maybe that meant he should not.

  After the mechs were out of sight everyone went on as though nothing had happened. The labor was fast and hard, for the induction ship was already taking on its passengers. Crowds, packages, happy confusion. By the time Toby returned from a nearby warehouse where the first wagonload went, only ripples in the mud-streaked river showed that the ship had tarried there at all.

  FOUR

  Mr. Preston

  That day was long and hard, what with plenty of barrels and hogsheads and wooden crates to unlash and sort out and stack in the crumbling stone warehouse. Stan was a subagent for one of the big importation enterprises and had a steady run of jobs, so Toby was kept busy the rest of the day.

  They had little tech here and relied on grunt labor. The Zoms from the quay wore out quickly and Stan brought out another crew of them. Toby did not see the one that had collapsed and did not go looking for it in the musty rear of the warehouse where they were kept, either.

  The laboring time ended as the big bare patch of timestone overhead dimmed. This was a lucky occurrence, as people still preferred to sleep in darkness. Though there was no cycle of day and night here, a few hours of shadow were enough to set most into the slumber they needed. Toby had once seen a night that lasted several “days” so that folks began to openly speculate whether the illumination would ever return to the timestone. When the sulphurous glow did come it waxed into stifling heat and piercing glare so ferocious that everyone regretted their earlier impatience for it.

  Stan took Toby to his own boarding house and arranged for him, leaving just enough time for a bath of cold river water before supper. Toby was amazed at the boarding table to see the rapidfire putting away of victuals combined with fast talking, as though mouths were meant to chew and blab at the same time. Game hens roasted to golden brown appeared on an immense platter and were seized and devoured before they reached him, though Stan somehow managed to get two and shared. A skinny man with a goatee opposite Toby cared only for the amusements of his mouth, alternately chewing, joking, and spitting none too accurately into a brass spittoon set beside him. Stan ate only with his knife, nonchalantly inserting the blade sometimes all the way into his mouth. Toby managed to get forkfuls of gummy beans and thick slabs of gamy meat into himself before dessert came flying by, a concoction featuring an island of hard nuts in a sea of cream that burst into flame when a man touched his cigar to it. Stan ate some and then contentedly sat back in his wicker chair, picking his teeth with a shiny pocket knife, an exhibition of casual bravery unparalleled in Toby’s experience.

  Afterward Toby wanted more than anything to sleep, but Stan enticed him into the hubbub of the streets. They ended up in a bar dominated for a time by an immense, well-lubricated woman whose tongue worked well in its socket, her eyes rolling as she sang a ballad Toby could not fathom. At the end of it she fell with a crash to the floor and it took three men to carry her out. Toby could not decide whether this was part of the act or not, for it was more entertaining than the singing.

  Stan thrust some dark beer upon him and artfully took that moment to pay Toby his day’s wages, which of course made Toby seem a piker if he did not buy the next round, which came with unaccountable speed. He was halfway through that mug and thinking better of this evening, of this huge complex city, of his fine new friend Stan, and generally of the entire copious wonderful esty itself, when he recalled how his own father had drunk heavily years before. He remembered Killeen remarking at the time that in Family Bishop, you discarded a cork once you had pulled it from a bottle, knowing with assurance that it would not be needed again.

  This connection troubled him, but Stan relieved Toby’s frown by stretching his legs out and sticking a sock-clad foot up. The sock had a face sewed on it so that Stan could jiggle his toes and make the face show anger, smile, even blink. All the while Stan carried on a funny conversation with the artistic foot. But this made Toby remember a day after the Calamity, cold and bleak, when Bishops were camping overnight with some stragglers from other Families. A tall Knight boy had stuck his gray-socked foot from beneath some covers as a joke. Toby mistook it for a rat and threw his knife, skewering the foot. That had made him unpopular for some time around Family Knight.

  He smiled at this and had another sip of beer. Stan’s face went pale. Toby felt a presence behind him.

  Turning, he saw a tall man dressed in leather jacket and black pants, sporting a jaunty blue cap. No one but pilots could wear such a cap with its gold flashings across the bill.

  “Mr.—Mr. Preston,” Stan said.

  “You gentlemen out for an evening? Not too busy to discuss business?”

  Mr. Preston smiled with an austere good nature, as befitted a representative of an unfettered and truly independent profession. His Aspects had laboriously taught him that lords found themselves hampered by parliaments, ministers knew the constraints of their parishioners, even school teachers in their awful power finally worked for towns.

  But a silver river pilot knew no governance. A ship’s captain could give a half dozen or so orders as the induction motors readied and she backed sluggishly into the stream, but as soon as the engines engaged, the captain’s rule was overthrown. The pilot could then run the vessel exactly as he pleased, barking orders without consultation and beyond criticism by mere mortals.

  Without asking, Mr. Preston yanked a chair from another of the raw hardwood tables that packed the bar, and smacked it down at the table. “I heard you come from uptime—way uptime,” he said to Toby.

  “Uh, Stan told you?” Toby asked to get some time to think.

  “He dropped a word, yes. Was he wrong?” Mr. Preston peered at Toby intently, his broad mouth tilted at an assessing angle beneath a bristly brown mustache.

  “Nossir. Maybe he, uh, exaggerated, though.”

  “Said you’d been above Rockport.”

  “I caught sight of it in fog. That awful pearly kind that—”

  “How far beyond?”

  “Not much.”

  “Cairo?”

  “I . . . yeah, I gave it wide berth.”

  “Describe it.”

  “Big place, grander than this town.”

  “You see the point? With the sand reef?”

  “I didn’t see any reef.”

  “Fair enough—there isn’t any reef. What’s the two-horned point like?”

  “Foam whipping up in the air.”

  “Where’s the foam go?”

  “Shoots out of the river and arcs across to the other horn.”

  “You go under the arc?”

  “Nossir. I stayed in the easy water close on the other shore.”

  “Smart. That arc’s been there since I was a boy and nobody’s lived who tried to shoot with the current under it.”

  “I heard that too.”

  “Who from?”

  “Fellow upstream.”

  “How far upstream?”

  Nobody ever lied to a pilot, but you could shave the truth some. Toby took a sip of the dark beer that was thick enough to make a second supper—as some in the bar seemed to be doing, loudly—and said with care, “The reach above Cairo. That’s where I star
ted.”

  Mr. Preston leaned forward and jutted out his long jaw shrewdly. “There’s a big bar there, got to go by it easy. Sand, isn’t it?”

  “Nossir, it’s black iron.”

  Mr. Preston sat back and signaled the barkeep—who had been hovering, wringing a dirty rag—for a round. “Right. A plug of it that gushed up from some terrible event in the river bottom. Books say a geyser of molten metal—not the cool ones that flow under the river—that geyser came fuming up through the timestone itself.”

  “I’ve been in other parts of the esty and I haven’t seen anything like this river. It doesn’t seem logical.”

  “Not for us to know, son.”

  “Please don’t call me son, sir.”

  Mr. Preston’s bushy eyebrows crowded together, momentarily puzzled at the quick, hard note that had come into Toby’s voice, but then he waved his hand amply. “Surely done, Mr. Toby. I must say there is something about you that is wise beyond your apparent years. I am prepared to hire your services.”

  Stan was looking bug-eyed at this interchange. For two lowly freight musclers to be drinking with a pilot was like a damp river rat going to dinner at the mayor’s. And this latest development!

  “Services?” Stan put in, unable to restrain himself any longer.

  “Navigation. There’ve been five big time-squalls between here and Cairo since I was up that way. Now I got a commission to take the Natchez up that far and no sure way of knowing the river that far.”

  “I’m not sure I know the river all that well,” Toby demurred, his mind still aswarm with scattershot thoughts.

  “You see any of those storms?”

  “Two of them, yessir. From a distance, though.”

  “Only way to see one, I’d say,” Stan said with forced jocularity. He was still stunned from the offer.

  The pilot grimaced in agreement, an expression that told much of narrow escapes and lost friends. “You kept your skiff well clear?”

  “I poled and rowed, both. Prob’ly just lucky with the currents, truth to tell.”

  “A time-storm attracts ships according to their mass, see? Your rowing was most likely the cause of your salvation,” the pilot said. “An induction ship, despite its power, must be more crafty. Its weight is its doom.”