‘There’s a more fundamental point,’ Mark said seriously. ‘The engineering - the nuts and bolts - may have survived the trip, but the social fabric of the Northern didn’t stand the strain so well. Consider the behaviour of the Planners, towards the end; their messianic visions, which had had a thousand long years to incubate, became psychotic delusions, virtually.’ He looked pointedly at Uvarov. ‘And we had one or two other little local difficulties along the way.’
‘Yes.’ Louise’s tiredness was etched into her face. ‘I guess, in the end, we didn’t do a very good job of preserving our rationality, across the desert of time we’ve traversed . . .’
Mark looked around the table. ‘People, we aren’t Xeelee. We aren’t designed to live with each other for centuries, or millennia. We just don’t know how to build a society that could survive, indefinitely, in a cramped, enclosed box like the ship. We’ve already failed to do so.’
‘Do you have an alternative?’ Louise asked.
‘Sure. We stay in the System. But we get out of the damn ship. We could try to colonize some of the surviving moons. They can give us raw materials for habitats, at least. We could break up the Northern to give the new colonies a start . . . Louise, what I’m advocating is giving ourselves space, before we kill each other.’
Uvarov turned his face towards the Virtual; his blind smile was like a snake’s, Lieserl thought. ‘A nice romantic thought,’ he said. ‘But not viable, I’m afraid.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because of the helium flash.’ Uvarov turned, disconcertingly, straight to Lieserl; his eyes were shadowed pits. ‘The flash: the coming gift from Lieserl’s cute dark matter chums inside the Sun. Our best predictions are that it will blossom from the Sun within - at the most - a few centuries.’ He swivelled his head towards Louise. ‘And after that we can expect the carbon flash, and the oxygen flash, and . . . My friends, thanks to the photino birds, the Solar System is, in practical terms, uninhabitable.’
Mark glared at the old surgeon. ‘Then come up with a better idea.’
Louise held up her hands. ‘Wait. Let’s talk around the photino birds a little.’ She glanced at Lieserl. ‘You know more about the birds than any of us. Uvarov’s projections are right, I suppose.’
‘About the continuing forced evolution of the Sun? Oh, yes.’ Lieserl nodded, feeling uncomfortable to be at the centre of attention; she was aware of the flickering candlelight playing around her nose and eyes. ‘I’ve watched the birds for five million years. They’ve maintained their behaviour pattern for all of that time; I’ve no reason to believe they are going to change now. And your observations show that every other star, as far as we can tell, is inhabited—’
Uvarov scowled. ‘Infested. These birds of yours - these creatures of dark matter - they are our true enemy.’
Louise regarded Lieserl. ‘Do you think he’s right about that, too?’
Lieserl thought carefully. ‘No. Not exactly. Louise, I don’t think the birds really know we are here. After all, we’re as marginally visible to them as they are to us.’ She closed her eyes; the illusion of inner eyelids was remarkably accurate, she thought absently. ‘I think they became aware of me, quite early . . . I’ve told you I think they tried to find ways to keep me alive. But they never showed any inclination to go seeking more of my kind. And they never tried to communicate with me . . . Still,’ she said firmly, ‘I don’t think it’s true that the photino birds are an enemy.’
Uvarov laughed. ‘Then what in Lethe’s waters are they? They fit most of the criteria I can think of.’
Lieserl quailed from the harshness of the ruined man’s tone, but she pressed on. ‘I just don’t think it’s helpful to think of them in that way. They’re doing what they’re doing - wrecking our Sun - because that’s what they do. By accelerating the stars through their lifecycles they’re building a better Universe for themselves, and their own offspring, their own future.’ She groped for an image. ‘They’re like insects. Ants, perhaps.’ She glanced around the table. ‘Do any of you know what I’m talking about? The birds are following their own species imperatives. Which just happen to cut across ours, is all.’
Mark nodded. ‘I think your analogy is a good one. The birds don’t even have to be alive, in our sense of the word, to accomplish enormous things - changes on a cosmic scale. From the way you’ve described their lifecycles, they sound like classic von Neumann self-replicating machines . . .’
Uvarov leaned forward; his head seemed to roll at the top of his thin neck. ‘Listen to me. Alive or not, conscious or not, the photino birds are our eternal, true enemy. Because they are of dark matter, we are of baryonic matter.’
Louise drained her brandy snifter and poured herself a fresh measure. ‘Maybe so. But for most of human history - as far as we can tell from the old Paradoxa projections, and from the accounts Lieserl has provided us - the enemy of man was seen as the Xeelee.’
Uvarov smiled, eerily. ‘I don’t deny that, of course. Why should you be surprised at such a monumental misapprehension? My friends, even the comparatively few millennia of human history before our departure from the time streams in the Northern were a litany of ghastly errors: the tragi-comic working out of flaws hard-wired deep into our psyches, a succession of ludicrous, doomed enterprises fuelled by illusions and delusions. I refer you to the history of religious conflict and economic ideology, for a start. And I see no reason to suppose that people got any wiser after we left. He turned his head to Mark. ‘You were a socio-engineer, before you dropped dead,’ he said bluntly. ‘You’ll confirm what I say. It seems to me that the Xeelee war - or wars - were no more than still another ghastly, epochal error of mankind. We know that the Xeelee inhabited a higher plane, intellectually, than humans ever could: you only have to consider that remarkable craft, the nightfighter, to see that. But humans - being humans - could never accept that. Humans believed they must challenge the Xeelee: overthrow them, become petty kings of the baryonic cosmos.
‘This absurd rivalry led, in the end, to the virtual destruction of the human species. And - worse - it blinded us to the true nature of the Xeelee, and their goals: and to the threat of the dark matter realm.
‘It is clear to me now that there is a fundamental conflict in this Universe, between the dark and light forms of matter - a conflict which has, at last, driven the stars to their extinction. Differences among baryonic species - the Xeelee and ourselves, for instance - are as nothing compared to that great schism.’
Louise Ye Armonk frowned. ‘That’s a fairly gloomy scenario, Uvarov. Because if it’s true—’
‘If I’m correct, we face more than a simple search for safety beyond this imperilled Solar System. We may not be able to find a place to hide in this cosmos. Even if we were able to found some viable colony, the birds would come to seek it out, and destroy it. Because they must.’
Mark, the Virtual, seemed to be suppressing a laugh. ‘This Universe ain’t big enough for the both of us . . . Let me sum up: everyone’s dead, and the whole Universe is doomed. Well. How are we supposed to cope with an emergency like that?’ He grinned.
Lieserl studied his face curiously. After their brief physical contact, she felt intensely aware of Mark. And yet, it disquieted her that he could speak so flippantly.
For if Uvarov was right, then it could be that the humans in this fragile old ship were the only people left alive in an implacably hostile Universe.
Lieserl seemed to shrink in on herself, as if cowering inside this recently rediscovered shell of humanity; she looked around at the serious, young-old faces in the candlelight. Could it be true? Was this - she wondered with a stab of self-pity - was this the final ironic joke to be played on her by a vicious fate? She had been born as an alien within her own species. Now she had returned - been welcomed, even - and was it only to find that the story of man was finished?
‘I’m sorry,’ Mark was saying; he seemed deliberately to calm down. ‘Look, Uvarov, what you’re saying sounds absurd.
Impossibly pessimistic.’
‘Absurd? Pessimistic?’ Uvarov swivelled his blind eyes towards Mark. ‘You have sight; I do not. Show me a part of the sky free from the corruption wrought by these dark-matter crows.’
Mark’s grin grew uncertain. ‘But we can’t escape the cosmos.’
Now Uvarov smiled, showing the blackness of his toothless mouth. ‘Can’t we?’
Lieserl watched Uvarov with interest. His analysis of the Northern’s situation had a devastating clarity. He seemed to be prepared to address issues with unflinching honesty - more honestly than any of the others, including herself.
Perhaps this was why Louise Armonk kept Uvarov around, Lieserl speculated. As a human he was barely acceptable, and his sanity hung by a thread. But his logic was pitiless.
Spinner-of-Rope folded her bare arms on the tablecloth. ‘So, Doctor, you know better than all the generations of humans who ever lived.’
Uvarov sighed. ‘Perhaps I do, my dear. But then I have the benefit of hindsight. ’
‘Then tell us,’ Louise said. ‘You said humans were blind to the goals of the Xeelee. What were the Xeelee up to, all this time?’
‘It’s obvious.’ Uvarov swept his empty eyes around the table, as if seeking a reaction. ‘The Xeelee are the dominant baryonic species - the baryonic lords. And they have led the fight, the climactic battle for the Universe, against these swarms of dark-matter photino birds. They have been striving to preserve themselves in the face of the dark matter threat.’
‘And the human wars with the Xeelee—’
‘—were no more than an irritation to the Xeelee, I should judge. But a dreadful, strategic error by humanity.’
The group fell into silence; Lieserl noticed that the eyes of Trapper-of-Frogs had become huge with wonder, childlike. She stared into the candle flames, as if the truth of Uvarov’s words could be found there.
‘All right,’ Louise said sharply. ‘Uvarov, what I need to understand is where this leaves us. What should we actually do?’
There was a gurgling sound from within Uvarov’s wrapping of blankets; Lieserl, uneasily, realized that his chair was feeding him as he spoke.
‘What we should do,’ he said, ‘is obvious. We cannot possibly defend ourselves against the photino birds. Therefore we must throw ourselves on the mercy of our senior cousins - we must seek the protection of the baryonic lords, the Xeelee.’
Mark laughed. ‘And how, exactly, do we do that?’
‘We have evidence that the Xeelee are constructing a final redoubt,’ Uvarov said. ‘A last defence perimeter, within which they must intend to fall back. We must go there.’
Louise looked puzzled. ‘What evidence? What are you talking about?
Mark thought for a moment. ‘He means the Great Attractor . . .’ He summarized the findings of the anomalous gravity-wave emissions from the direction of the Attractor.
Louise frowned. ‘How do you know that’s anything to do with the Xeelee?’
‘Well, it could make sense, Louise; from the gravity waves we’ve picked up, we know something is going on at the Attractor site. Some kind of activity . . . something huge. And there’s no sign of life anywhere else . . .’
Uvarov nodded, his head jerking. ‘The Attractor is an immense construction site, perhaps: the last great baryonic project. We can even guess at its nature.’
‘Yes?’ Louise snapped.
‘We know their technology was based on the manipulation of spacetime,’ Uvarov said. ‘We have the evidence of the starbreaker - gravity-wave weapons - and the domain-wall defect drive of the nightfighter. I believe the object in Sagittarius, whatever it is, is a construct.’
‘A construct of what?’
‘Manipulated spacetime,’ Uvarov said.
‘It’s logical, Louise,’ Mark said. ‘Think about it. Only through spacetime effects, including gravitation, can the Xeelee interact with the photino birds. So they’ve evolved weapons and artifacts based on the manipulation of spacetime: the nightfighter domain-wall drive, the starbreaker . . .’
‘The Ring,’ Lieserl breathed. ‘Perhaps this - the Great Attractor - is the Ring. The Xeelee’s greatest, final Project . . . ‘Is it possible? ‘Dr Uvarov, have you found the Ring?’
Garry Uvarov turned to her. ‘Perhaps.’
Mark was nodding. ‘Maybe you’re right . . . We’ve evidence that the dark matter creatures know about the activity in Sagittarius, too.’ To Lieserl he said, ‘We’ve seen streams of them coming and going from the Sun and heading in the direction of the Attractor . . . as if that is the focus of their activities, as well.’
Uvarov smiled. ‘It is the final battlefield.’
‘How far?’ Lieserl asked.
Louise grimaced, her mouth twisting. ‘To the Great Attractor? Three hundred million light-years . . . It’s no walk around the block.’
‘But we could get there,’ Mark said. Lieserl noticed that his tone was flat, more distant than before. ‘We have the nightfighter hyperdrive. We’ve no evidence that the hyperdrive is distance-limited. Spinner’s flights have already man-rated it . . .’
Lieserl saw how Spinner-of-Rope shrank, subtly, away from the table, and dropped her small hands into her lap, her round face expressionless.
Louise Ye Armonk was frowning. ‘We’d have to find a way of transporting our people, obviously.’
Mark spread his hands. ‘Surely that’s possible We may have to detach the lifedome from the Northern, fix it to the nightfighter somehow . . .’
Louise nodded. ‘We’d have to strengthen the dome internally, though . . . Obviously we’ll need co-operation from the Decks. Morrow - will we get it?’
Morrow leaned forward, into the light, to reply.
Lieserl folded her hands on the table and tried to stop them trembling. She let the rest of the conversation, as it delved into detail, wash over her.
The decision seemed to have been made, then, almost by default. She examined it in her own mind.
Had there been any alternative? Given Uvarov’s devastating logic, probably not.
But Uvarov’s logic implied that she - Lieserl - was going to end her own long, strange life at the centre of all myths - myths which had persisted for most of mankind’s sad history.
She was going to the Ring . . .
PART IV
TRAJECTORY: SPACELIKE
23
From the upper forest Deck to the loading bay at the base, lights blazed from the Northern’s battered lifedome. The human glow flooded over impassive Xeelee construction material, evoking no reflection.
Spinner-of-Rope sat in her cramped pilot’s cage. Her helmet was filled with urgent chatter relayed from the lifedome.
Her hands fidgeted, plucking at the seams of her gloves; they looked like nervous, fluttering birds, she thought. She rested the hands deliberately against the material of her trousers, stilling them. The crew still weren’t ready. How much of this waiting did they think she could endure?
Behind her, the smooth lines of the nightfighter’s discontinuity-drive wings swept across space, outlined in blood-red by the bloated hulk of the Sun. The lifedome of the Great Northern - severed from its columnar spine - had been grafted crudely onto the shoulders of the nightfighter, pinned within a superstructure of scaffolding which embraced the lifedome and clasped it to the nightfighter. Behind the dome a GUTdrive power source, cannibalized from the abandoned Northern, sat squat on the nightfighter, cables snaking from it and into the dome. And, cradled within the attaching superstructure, Spinner could see the short, graceful profile of the Great Britain: the old sea ship, preserved from abandonment once more by the sentimentality of Louise Ye Armonk, was a dark shadow against the lifedome, like some insect clinging to its glowing face.
The lifedome was a mile-wide encrustation on the cool morphology of Xeelee technology; it dwarfed the Xeelee ship which carried it, looking like a grotesque parasite, she thought.
Spinner closed her eyes, trying to shut out the surrounding,
pressing universe of events. She listened to the underlying wash of her own, rapid, breathing. Under her helmet her spectacles pinched the bridge of her nose with a small, familiar discomfort, and she could feel the cool form of her father’s arrow-head against her chest. Clinging biostat telltales clung to her flesh, sharp and cold, but the little probes had at least become familiar: not nearly as uncomfortable as she’d found them at first. The environment suit smelled of plastic and metal, and a little of herself; but there was also a sparkle of orange zest, from one of the helmet nipples.
‘ . . . Spinner-of-Rope.’
The voice emerged from the background lifedome babble like the clear voice of an oboe within an orchestra. (And that, she thought, was a metaphor which wouldn’t have occurred to her in the days before she’d poked her head out of the forest.)
‘I hear you, Louise.’
‘I think we’re ready.’
Spinner laughed. ‘Are you joking? I can’t imagine you all sounding less ready.’
Louise sighed, clearly irritated. ‘Spinner, we’re as ready as we’re ever going to be. We’ve been working on this for a year now. If we wait until every bolt is tightened - and until every damn jobsworth in the Decks, every antique anal-retentive on every one of Morrow’s damn launch committees, is prepared to give his or her grudging acquiescence - we’ll still be sitting here when the Sun goes cold.’
‘It’s a little different from your old days, Louise,’ Spinner said ruefully. Spinner had seen images of the Northern’s first launch - the extravagant parties that had preceded it, the flotilla of intraSystem craft that had swirled around the huge GUTship as it had hauled itself out of the System.
Louise grunted. ‘Yeah, well. I guess those days are gone. Things are a little more seat-of-the-pants now, Spinner.’
Yes, Spinner thought resentfully, but the trouble is it’s my seat; my pants.
Louise said, ‘We’re ready technically, anyway, according to all of Mark’s feedbacks. We’ve laid the co-ordinates of the flight into your waldo systems . . . all we can do now is see if they work.’
Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring Page 119
