The Spheres of Heaven tmp-2

by Charles Sheffield

  “Stay here as long as you like and help yourselves to anything you want.” Deb was suddenly on her feet again. “I’m leaving.”

  “Where are you going?” Chrissie took her by the arm.

  “To talk to Chan.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Should I come with you?”

  “ No!” Deb shook herself free and was out of the door before anyone could move.

  “Better go after her,” Danny said. “When she finds him she’ll kill him.”

  “No.” Chrissie spoke firmly. “You stay here. Don’t you people understand anything ? If she does kill him, it’ll only be because he deserves it.”

  She settled back down on the bed and stared at the display. The Geyser Swirl was still pictured, and the voice of the Angel droned on: “Mean estimated survival time for a suited individual on the surface of the planet Swirl Kappa Three, sixteen minutes. On Swirl Kappa Four, four minutes. On Swirl Kappa Five, nineteen minutes …”

  “Oh, shut up,” Danny said. “Tarb? Tully? Should we follow Deb?”

  “I’ll go with Chrissie’s judgment. We’ll be at the Link in a few more hours. And then, if it works, we’ll be there .” Tarbush Hanson nodded gloomily at the display of the Swirl. “Relax, Danny, and have a drink. Get me one, too, while you’re at it. It may be our last ever.”

  * * *

  Deb had not been totally honest. She did know where Chan was — or at least, she knew where his rooms were, thirty meters along the corridor from hers.

  Only he was not there. Glancing around — if he could enter private rooms without knocking, so could she — Deb found no sign that he had ever been inside. The bed had not been touched and a travel case sat unopened in the middle of the floor.

  Where was he? The only thing she knew for certain was that he must be somewhere on board. She stood still long enough to slow her pulse to an even fifty beats a minute, then set out on a careful and deliberate search.

  After half an hour she had found no trace of Chan, but she had gained an idea of just how much space there was inside an eighty-thousand-ton warship. The interior volume was close to a million cubic meters, divided into thousands of rooms and chambers interconnected through a maze of tunnels and corridors. At the rate she was going, long before she located Chan the Hero’s Return would have reached the Link entry point and made its transition.

  She needed help. That was not going to be easy to find, in a ship where the service robots were too dumb to answer even the simplest question.

  Deb headed for the main control room. Surely there, if anywhere, she would find other people.

  Make that person rather than people , and she would be right. The control room of the Hero’s Return had originally also been the fire control zone. Row after row of weapons terminals, all unoccupied, formed a three-dimensional matrix. At the far end of the great cylindrical chamber, lolling at ease on a couch, Deb saw a solitary blonde.

  The woman, lanky and starvation-thin, turned at Deb’s approach and said, “If you’re looking for Dag Korin, he’s taking a nap. He said he’d be here when the time came to make the Link transition.” She glanced at one of the displays. “That’s less than five hours from now. I hope he wakes up in time.”

  “I don’t want General Korin. I’m seeking Chan Dalton.”

  Deb expected a casual “sorry” or “never heard of him.” But the woman nodded.

  “I don’t know where Dalton is now. But I know where he was , half an hour ago.”

  “Where?”

  “Forward. I told him, the best place to see what’s ahead of the ship is the bow observation port. When he left there he said he’d be back later.”

  “Thank you.” Deb was already on the way.

  “All the way forward,” the skinny woman called after her. “Follow the central corridor as far as you can go.”

  Which, as Deb soon found, was very far indeed. She seemed to race for miles before the corridor ahead ended in a small ring hatch. It was open, and she dived through headfirst and emerged into a bubble-like observation chamber.

  Chan was there, sitting in a swivel seat and staring out at the stars. She had made no plans as to what to do when she found him. She grabbed the back of his chair to slow herself and blurted, “You were a Paradox addict.”

  He turned slowly and said in a sleepwalker’s voice, “Yes. I was a Paradox addict.”

  “Down on Earth.”

  “Yes.”

  “For how long?”

  “Forever.” He roused himself. “No, I guess that won’t do as an answer. From my first hit to my last, it was three years, five months and fourteen days. I didn’t know any of that at the time, of course. All the days blended into one.”

  “How were you able to stop?”

  “The hardest way. I needed money. An addict will do anything to pay for the next shot. One day I robbed the wrong person. He was chief enforcer for the Duke of Bosny. Next thing I knew I was in a labor camp in the Gallimaufries where the drug of preference was Velocil. The guards ran the trade in it, but Paradox and Velocil clash. Take both and you die.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I died. Or felt like I did. The guards knew I was hooked on Paradox, so they wouldn’t give me Velocil. I guess I ought to have been grateful to them, but I wasn’t. I screamed and howled and begged and prayed. No good. Four years later I was alive, out of the camp, and free of the habit. But you know what? In my dreams, I’m a Paradox addict still.”

  It wasn’t the passion in his voice that made Deb shiver. It was the total lack of it.

  “Out of the labor camp,” he went on, “and out of a job, too. Who would want anything to do with a man with a Paradox record?”

  “Why didn’t you come to—” She checked herself. “What did you do?”

  “I went to the man who caught me and put me in the camp. I told him, look, if it wasn’t for you I’d be dead now. It’s your fault that I’m alive, so you owe me a job. He said I had a hell of a nerve. But he seemed amused. He put me on his own staff and I became an enforcer for the Duke of Bosny. I was a good one, too. I knew every trick in the book, and a lot that weren’t there. I’d used them all to support my own habit.”

  Deb had sunk to her knees at the side of the chair. “After you got out. Why didn’t you contact me?”

  “It had been nearly eight years. Eight years going on forever. Too long.” Chan turned away to stare at the cold stars. Far ahead the rainbow beacon of the Link entry point was visible as a bright point, warning space vehicles to stay away. At last he said, “I did check with a couple of the old team. They told me you were living with someone else. That finished it. I had nothing to offer, and it wouldn’t be fair to contact you. Anyway, it would have made no difference.”

  “ Wrong!It would have made a difference to me .”

  The feeling that swept through Deb was like nothing she had known in her whole life, a bloodred rage that twisted and tore at her insides. She raised her hand. One blow would break his neck.

  He did not see the movement, because he was still staring at nothing. He could not possibly have seen her raised hand. But he said, slowly and thoughtfully, “You know, when I was asked to lead an expedition to the Geyser Swirl, I knew instantly that I would accept. But I didn’t know why. I told myself that it was the chance to do what we had all talked of doing, long ago. Since then I’ve had other thoughts. This mission is so dangerous it sounds like guaranteed suicide. Sane people don’t commit suicide. And only monsters talk their oldest friends into going along to die with them. Have I been building a team? Or have I been luring you and Danny and Chrissie and the others to share my fate?”

  He sounded like a zombie, and his tone of utter hopelessness broke Deb. The blood seemed to drain out of her, leaving her weak and faint. She brought her raised hand down on the back of Chan’s head, not violently but gently, touching his hair. “How long before we reach Link entry?”

  “About four
and a half hours.”

  “Then that’s when you’ll find out if you’re a monster. Are you going back to the control room?”

  “I don’t think so. The Link transition is the job of the ship’s computer. It’s supposed to be close to omniscient, and close to infallible.”

  “So why are we here? What can humans do that it can’t?”

  “We can risk human lives. That’s Dag Korin’s job now; mine when we get through the link.”

  “Mine too, then. I’ll wait here — if that’s all right with you?” She waited, but there was no word, no nod of acceptance. Finally she went on, “I can tell you one thing right now. No matter what happens when we go through the Link, you haven’t lured anybody here. Not Chrissie, not Tarb, not Danny, not anybody. Every member of the old team, they would rather be here than anywhere else in the universe.”

  Still he said nothing.

  She added, “And so would I.”

  * * *

  Link network transitions: every one the same, every one different.

  Similarities:

  * Before a transition can be initiated, coordinates must be provided. One hundred and sixty-eight decimal digits are needed, enough to specify origin and destination to within one meter anywhere in the universe. No exceptions are permitted.

  * The matter density within the destination volume must be no greater than that of a thin gas; otherwise, Link transition will not be initiated. Link points on Earth’s surface come very close to that limit.

  * Adequate (which is to say, enormous) power must be available at the originating Link point. Travel to the stars will never be cheap. The power for a single interstellar trip eats up the savings of a lifetime. When a large mass is involved, such as that of the Hero’s Return , no private groups can afford the expense. Such Link transitions are the prerogative of wealthy species governments.

  Differences:

  * Link entry positions are absolute, but Link entry velocities depend on mass. A small ship, such as the Mood Indigo , can enter a link with some latitude in velocity and emerge unscathed. A ship the size of the Hero’s Return must hit the right entry velocity to within millimeters a second.

  * Velocity error converts kinetic energy to heat energy upon Link emergence. Miss the entry speed by a few kilometers a second, and your ship will emerge red hot.

  * There is no uniformity in Link destinations, and no warning given of their properties. A traveller must learn of any dangers — high temperature, intense gravity field — ahead of time.

  * Small fluctuations, believed to be amplified quantum effects, add a random element to the direction of travel on emergence. In the worst possible case, the one-in-a-million shot that no one likes to talk about, emergence never takes place at all. In any event, a ship had better be prepared to make sudden course changes.

  That encourages one other permitted variation: the prayers of the crew about to undergo transition can be anything you like. The contribution of prayer to Link transitions is not established — but almost everyone does it.

  Zero hour was approaching for the Hero’s Return . The entry point gaped open, a hole in the fabric of spacetime. In the final seconds before transition, every person on board fell silent. Men and women, young or old, believers or atheists, alone or together, outwardly nervous or outwardly confident, vanished into their private worlds.

  The final second ticked away. Deb Bisson gripped Chan Dalton’s hand, hard enough to bruise. He felt the pain, and welcomed it.

  Time ran out. The great bulk of the Hero’s Return , slowly, sluggishly, as if reluctantly, slid forward to enter the dark eye of the Link.

  17: SAY HELLO TO AN ANGEL

  Bony had known about Tinker Composites since he was a small child. He had studied the aliens, watched educational programs, asked a thousand (unanswered) questions of other humans, and read everything that he could lay his hands on. The Tinkers fascinated him. Pipe-Rillas fascinated him. All the Stellar Group aliens fascinated him. That was one reason he had been so eager to go to the stars, ever since he was a child in the basement warrens of Earth. And now …

  As the inner hatch swung open and he took the first step forward into the ship’s interior, Bony found that he was trembling.

  His first thought — I hope Liddy can’t see how nervous I am — vanished as a carpet of dark purple rose from the floor in front of him. He heard a whirring of many wings and flinched as a cloud of purple-black components, all apparently identical and each about as big as his finger, buzzed around his head.

  As Liddy gasped and clutched Bony’s arm, the Tinker components flew to the other side of the cabin and settled around a tall pole. Fluttering their wings in a blur of motion they hovered by the column, then grasped it with small claws on the front of shiny leather-like wings. Thin, whip-like antennas reached out and connected heads to neighboring tails. Each body possessed a ring of pale green eyes, all of which seemed to be staring at Bony. That lasted only a few seconds. Then a second wave with its own myriad of eyes was settling on top of the first, and a third over that. It was no longer possible to make out individual components, and Bony could see no way to count them. He knew that a Tinker Composite could form at many different sizes, but he did not know if this one was big or small.

  The Composite was taking on a particular shape, a crude approximation to a human form. Within two minutes the main body was complete, a rough “head” above it, while “legs” extended outward and downward to make contact with and derive support from the cabin floor. To Bony’s surprise — this was something he had not seen mentioned in the Tinker descriptions — many of the individual components remained unattached. Of the total in the cabin, only about four-fifths were connected to form a compact mass; the others stood tail-first on the cabin floor or hung singly from walls and ceiling.

  The mass of the Tinker Composite began to form a funnel-like opening in its head-like extremity. From that aperture came a hollow wheezing moan. “Ohhh-ahhh-ggghh. Hharr-ehh-looo,” it said. Then, in a crude approximation to solar speech, “Har-e-loo. Hal-lo.”

  Bony, feeling like a fool, said tentatively, “Hello.” He was reassured when Liddy echoed him, “Hello,” and added, “I am Liddy Morse.”

  She was still wearing the translator at her belt, although for Tinkers it should be unnecessary. That idea was confirmed when a whistling voice said, “Hello, Liddy Morse,” and, after a pause, “You may call us, Eager Seeker.”

  Did you shake hands with a Tinker Composite? If so, with what? Bony said, “I am Bonifant Rombelle. You can call me Bony.”

  The other occupant of the cabin had been crouching in a corner, telescoping thin limbs and narrow body into a small space. Now the Pipe-Rilla unfolded, taller and taller, until she brushed against the four-meter cabin ceiling. Her rear legs were still partly bent.

  “So it is true.” The head bobbed in greeting. “Eager Seeker was right and I, Vow-of-Silence, was wrong. It is as the Sea-wanderers told us, there is a third ship.”

  “Sea-wanderers? Third ship?” Bony had so many questions he hardly knew where to begin. He opened his helmet. The air smelled of peppermint, overlain with a faint odor of ripe peaches, but it was perfectly breathable. He began to remove his suit.

  “The natives of this planet,” the Pipe-Rilla said. She and the Tinker Composite were watching with interest, as though the removal of Bony’s suit represented some molting action unique to humans. “Sea-wanderers is what they call themselves, as you surely know.”

  “We didn’t know. We have been calling this planet Limbo, and these natives, Limbics.”

  “Hm.” Vow-of-Silence bent her head to one side. “Limbo. Not bad, not bad at all. I think we may adopt it also. But since you are here, you must have been talking to your Limbics.”

  “We have.” Bony didn’t want the aliens to think that humans were total fools, but honesty made him add, “We had trouble with the language at first.”

  “That is understandable. It is unusually high in liquid consonan
ts.” Vow-of-Silence tittered.

  After an awkward moment — was it a joke, and was he supposed to laugh? — Bony went on, “In fact it was Liddy who made the language breakthrough.”

  The Pipe-Rilla followed his gesture. Liddy was removing her suit also, and Vow-of-Silence stared at her breasts with enormous interest.

  “Why, you are a human female. This is wonderful. I have never before met one. I would very much like the opportunity of extended conversation with you.”

  “Sure. Although this isn’t the best time for it. We have more questions.” Liddy glanced at Bony. “Right?”

  “We sure do. And we have some answers, too, that you may find useful. This is not just a water-world. There’s land here, too — and there may be great dangers.”

  The Pipe-Rilla leaned far forward, looking not into Bony’s face but into Liddy’s. “Would you please inform your mate, with as much respect as I am capable of offering, that we came to this world well before he did, have done more exploration, had more conversations with the natives, and may be well aware of what he seeks to inform us. We will exchange information gladly, but we suggest it may save time if we speak first.”

  “Exploration.” Bony seized that one word. “But until we built the extension to your airlock, you could not leave your ship.”

  “Not true. Certain of us did leave it. Now, the rest of us choose not to leave it.” Vow-of-Silence crouched low in front of the two humans, her vestigial forelimbs clasped across her narrow chest in a misleading gesture of supplication. The pleasant peppermint odor strengthened. “Listen, please, to our tale. The crew of this ship, the Finder , originally comprised myself and an extra-large Tinker Composite, Eager Seeker. We entered a Link point located in the Fomalhaut system and expected to arrive in the region of empty space within the Geyser Swirl. Instead, we found our ship under water. However, we learned from the Sea-wanderers here that there exists a nearby land mass. We decided to explore it.”