Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring

by Stephen Baxter

  It was a small, almost trivial project. But it had actually been Milpitas’ idea, and Morrow had been glad to offer to work on it with him, as part of what he thought of as Milpitas’ rehabilitation to zero-gee. Anything that got the Planner - and those he influenced - thinking and working in zero-gee conditions was a good thing, in Morrow’s view.

  ‘Morrow.’ Louise Armonk’s voice emerged from a point in the air. It was loud, urgent in his ear. ‘Morrow. Can you hear me?’

  Morrow looked down to the grass-coated floor of the Deck; he knew that Louise was somewhere below his floor in her old steam-ship, studying the neutron star system. ‘What is it, Louise?’

  ‘Morrow, you have to get away from there.’

  ‘But, Louise—’

  ‘Move, damn it. Anywhere.’

  Milpitas was studying him. ‘Well? Is there a problem?’

  ‘Milpitas. Come.’

  Morrow grabbed the Planner’s robe at the shoulder. He flexed his knees, planted his feet squarely against the Deck surface, and pushed himself into the air, dragging Milpitas after him. Looking down, he saw the spherical pond recede below them.

  Air resistance brought them to a stop in mid-air, five yards above the Deck surface.

  Morrow released the Planner. Milpitas’ arms were still wet to the elbow, and his bony legs protruded from beneath his robe.

  ‘Louise? All right, we’ve moved. Now will you tell me what’s wrong?’

  ‘We’re in trouble.’ Morrow heard panicky shouting behind Louise’s voice, and flat, even commands being issued by Mark. ‘We’re in the path of a section of string . . . If our projections are correct, it’s going to pass right through Poole Park.’

  Morrow stared around at the Decks. Suddenly the metal walls of this place, coated with plants and people, seemed impossibly fragile. ‘But how can that be? I thought that loop was light-years away.’

  ‘So did we, Morrow. We’re trying to confirm the string’s trajectory so we can program the discontinuity-drive waldoes, and—’

  But Louise’s voice was gone.

  Lieserl and Mark stood on the surface of the neutron star planet, in Virtual mockups of environment suits. They looked at each other uncertainly.

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ Lieserl said.

  ‘I know.’ Through his sketch of a faceplate, Mark’s expression was lifeless, cold; Lieserl knew that meant he was diverting processing power to higher priorities.

  The surface under Lieserl’s feet was pumice-grey and looked friable. Beside them, waiting patiently, was a ‘bot, a fat-wheeled trolley fitted with a few articulated arms and sensors. The dust of the planet had smeared the ‘bot’s wheels with grey, Lieserl saw.

  A few yards away their pod was a fat, gleaming cylinder; within the pod’s clear walls Lieserl could see Uvarov, wrapped in his blanket.

  The sky was fantastic. The gas ring was a belt of smoke which encompassed the world, all the way to the horizon. The far side of the ring was a pale strip of white, bisecting the sky. She could just make out the neutron star itself, a tiny, baleful blood-pearl threaded onto the line of smoke; and its huge companion was an attenuated ball of yellow-grey mist, bleeding gas onto its malevolent twin.

  The starbow was a crack across the emptiness away from the plane of the ring; high above her head, Lieserl could see the gleaming lights of the Northern’s lifedome, in the ship’s remote orbit around the planet.

  The building they had detected from orbit was a tetrahedron, twenty feet tall, sitting impassively on the surface.

  Lieserl felt frustrated. Had they come so far, approached this astonishing mystery, so closely, only for their comms links to fail?

  She tapped her helmet. ‘I feel as if I’ve gone deaf,’ she said.

  ‘Me too.’ Mark smiled thinly, some of the expression returning to the waxy image of his face. ‘Well, we’ve certainly lost the voice links from the Northern.’ He looked up uneasily. ‘I wonder what in Lethe is happening up there.’

  ‘Maybe they are trying to recall us.’

  Mark shrugged. ‘Or maybe not.’ He looked at her. ‘Lieserl, do you feel any different? As far as I can tell the links to the central processors back on the Northern are still functioning - although I’m working read-only at the moment.’

  She closed her eyes and looked inwards. ‘Yes. It’s the same for me.’ Read-only meant she couldn’t pass her impressions - the new memories she was laying down - back to the processors on the Northern which were now the core of her awareness. She looked up at the Northern’s steady yellow light. ‘Do you think we should go back?’

  Mark hesitated, looking back at the pod.

  Uvarov stirred, like an insect in some glass cocoon, Lieserl thought. ‘I’m the only one of us who’s in genuine danger here,’ he rasped. ‘The two of you are just projections. Virtual phantasms. You are only wearing those damn suits as crutches for your psyches, in Lethe’s name. Even if this planet exploded now, all you’d lose would be a few hours of data input.’ He snarled the last words like an insult.

  ‘What’s your point, Uvarov?’ Mark said.

  ‘Get on with your search,’ Uvarov snapped. ‘Stop wasting time. There is nothing you can do about whatever problems are occurring at the Northern. For Life’s sake, look at the bigger picture. The baryonic Universe is coming to an end. What can happen to make things worse than that?’

  Mark laughed, a little grimly. ‘All right, Doctor. Come on, Lieserl.’ They trudged over the surface towards the structure.

  The klaxon died. The sudden silence was shocking.

  Morrow tapped his ear - he thought self-deprecatingly, as if that would restore the Virtual projection of Louise’s voice.

  Milpitas had left his side. With surprising agility the Planner had swum down through the air, away from Morrow and back towards the pond.

  There was a grind of metal, high above him.

  He heard a single scream - an unearthly sound that echoed from the walls, rattling through the silence of the Decks. And now there was another scream - but this time, Morrow realized, it was the product of no human voice; the shriek was of air escaping from a breached hull.

  He peered up into the shining air, looking for the breach.

  There. Against one wall, mist was gathering over a straight-line gash which sliced through a field of dwarf wheat. A literacy-recovery class had been working there; now, people scrambled through the air, away from the billowing fog, screaming.

  He heard Milpitas grunt. Morrow looked down.

  Milpitas stared down at his midriff and clasped his hands over his belly. His scarred face was creased into an expression of disapproving surprise, and - in that final instant - Morrow was reminded of Planner Milpitas as he had once been: tough-minded, controlling, forcing the world to bend to his will.

  Then Milpitas folded forward, around a line just below his solar plexus. For the first fraction of a second it looked as if he were doubling over in pain - but, Morrow saw with mounting horror, Milpitas kept on folding, bending until Morrow could hear the crackle of crushed ribs, the deeper snap of vertebrae.

  There was nothing visible, nobody near Milpitas; it was as if he were inflicting this unimaginable horror on himself, or as if the Planner’s body had been crumpled in some huge, transparent fist.

  Then, it seemed that that same huge fist - powerful, irresistible, invisible- grabbed Morrow himself and hurled him down towards the Deck.

  He screamed and wrapped his arms around his head.

  He smashed into the spherical pond, so lovingly constructed by himself and Milpitas. Reeds and lilies slapped at his face and arms, and brackish water forced itself into his eyes and mouth.

  Then he was through the pond, and the Deck surface hurtled up to meet him, unimaginably hard.

  The tetrahedron was liberally coated with dust. Mark had the ‘bot roll forward and wipe the building’s surface, tentatively. Beneath a half-inch thickness of the dust, the material of the tetrahedron’s construction was milky-white, seamles
s. The triangular faces gave the structure the look of something flimsy, or temporary, Lieserl thought - like a tent of cloth.

  It had been Mark’s suggestion for them to approach this structure in human form. ‘We want to know - among other things - if people built this thing, and why,’ he had argued. ‘How else are we going to get a genuine feel for the place, unless we look at it through human eyes?’ Lieserl hadn’t been sure. To restrict themselves to human form - more than was necessary to interface with Uvarov - had seemed inefficient. But, staring at the structure now, Lieserl realized what a good idea it had been.

  ‘It’s a tetrahedron,’ Lieserl observed. ‘Like an Interface portal.’

  ‘Well, that’s a characteristic signature of human architecture,’ Mark murmured. ‘Doesn’t mean a thing, by itself, though. And from the thickness of that dust, I guess we know this place has been abandoned for a long time.’

  ‘Hmm. The door looks human enough.’

  The door was a simple hatchway seven feet tall and three wide, set at the base of one of the tetrahedron’s triangular walls. There was a touchpad control, set at the waist height of an average human.

  Mark shrugged. ‘Let’s try to open it.’

  The ‘bot rolled forward silently, bouncing a little on the rough surface despite its fat, soft wheels. It extended an arm fitted with a crude mechanical grab, tapped cautiously at the door, and then pushed at the control pad.

  The door slid aside, into the fabric of the tetrahedron. A puff of air gushed out at them. A few scraps of dust tumbled out, and, when the air had dispersed, the dust fell in neat parabolae to the surface.

  Beyond the door there was a small rectangular chamber, big enough for four or five people. The walls were of the same milky substance as the outer shell, and were unadorned. There was another door, identical to the first, set into the far wall of the chamber.

  ‘At least we know there’s still power,’ Mark said.

  ‘This is an airlock,’ Lieserl said, looking inside the little chamber. ‘Plain, functional. Very conventional. Well, what now? Do we go in?’

  Mark pointed.

  The ‘bot was already rolling into the airlock. It bumped over the lip, and came to a halt at the centre of the lock.

  Lieserl and Mark hesitated for a few seconds; the ‘bot waited patiently inside the lock.

  Mark grinned. ‘Evidently, we go in!’

  He held out his arm to Lieserl. Arm in arm, they trooped after the robot into the lock.

  The lock, containing the ‘bot and the two of them, was a little cramped. Lieserl found herself shying away from the ‘bot’s huge, dusty wheels, as if she might get her environment suit smeared.

  The ‘bot reached out and pushed the control to open the next door. There was a hiss of pressure equalization.

  The ‘bot exposed an array of chemical sensors, and Mark cracked open his faceplate and sniffed elaborately.

  ‘Oh, stop showing off,’ Lieserl said.

  ‘Air,’ he said. ‘Earth-normal, more or less. A few strange trace elements. No unusual smells - and quite sterile. We could breathe this stuff if we had to, Lieserl.’

  The lock’s inner door swung open, revealing a larger chamber. The ‘bot pushed a lamp, magnesium-white, into the chamber, and light flared from the walls. Lieserl caught a glimpse of conventional-looking furniture: beds, chairs, a long desk. The chamber’s walls sloped upwards to a peak; this single room looked large enough to occupy most of the tetrahedral volume of the building.

  The ‘bot rolled forward. Mark stepped briskly out of the lock and into the chamber; Lieserl followed.

  ‘Mark Wu? Lieserl?’ Uvarov’s rasp was loud in her ear.

  ‘Yes, Doctor,’ Lieserl replied. ‘We hear you. You don’t need to shout.’

  ‘Oh, really,’ Uvarov said. ‘Unlike you, I didn’t simply assume that our transmissions would carry through whatever those walls are made of.’

  Lieserl smiled at Mark. ‘Were you worried about us, Uvarov?’

  ‘No. I was worried about the ‘bot.’

  Lieserl stepped towards the centre of the main chamber and looked around.

  The walls of the tetrahedral structure sloped up around her, coming to a neat point fifteen feet above her head. She could see partitioned sections in two of the corners. Bedrooms? Bathrooms? A galley, perhaps?

  The ‘bot scurried around the edge of the room, its multiple arms probing into corners and edges. It left planet-dust tracks behind itself.

  The main piece of furniture was a long desk, constructed of what looked - for all the world - like wood. Lieserl could see monitors of some kind inlaid into the desk surface. The monitors were dead, but they looked like reasonably conventional touch-screens. Lieserl reached out a gloved hand, wishing she could feel the wood surface.

  There were chairs, in a row, before the desk - four of them, side by side. These were obviously of human construction, with upright backs, padded seats, and two arms studded with controls.

  ‘Mark, look at this,’ she said. ‘These chairs would fit either of us.’

  Mark had found something - two objects - at the end of the desk; he had the ‘bot roll across and pick the objects up. Mark’s face was lit with wonder; he bent to inspect the first object, held before him in the ‘bot’s delicate grab. ‘This is some kind of stylus,’ he said. ‘Could be something as simple as an ink pen . . .’ The ‘bot held up the second object. ‘But this thing is unmistakable, Lieserl. Look at it. It’s a cup.’ His hands on his knees, he looked up at her. ‘The builders of this place must have been gone a million years. But it’s as if they just stepped outside.’

  Uvarov rasped, ‘Who? I wish you’d speak to me, damn it. What have you found?’

  Mark and Lieserl looked at each other.

  ‘People,’ Lieserl said. ‘We’ve found people, Uvarov.’

  Mark sat with Louise in her oak-panelled bedroom inside the Great Britain. Mark had called up a Virtual schematic of the Northern’s lifedome; the schematic was a cylinder three feet tall, hovering over her bed. The schematic showed a lifedome which sparkled with glass and light, and the greenery of the forest Deck glowed under the skydome at the crown.

  Louise felt something move inside her; the lifedome looked so beautiful - so fragile.

  She stared around at the familiar polished walls of her room - it was actually two of the old ship’s state rooms, knocked together and converted. Here was the centre of her world, if anywhere was; here were her few pieces of old furniture, her clothes, her first, antique data slate - which still contained the engineering sketches of the Great Britain she’d prepared during her first visit to the old ship as a teenager, five million years and half a Universe away. If only, she thought, if only she could pull this room around her like some huge wooden blanket, never to emerge into the complex horrors of the world . . .

  But here was Mark, politely sitting on the corner of her bed and watching her face. And now he said quietly: ‘Here it comes, Louise.’

  She forced herself to look at the Virtual of the lifedome.

  Mark pointed at the mid-section of the lifedome. A horizontal line of blue-white light appeared; it shimmered balefully against the clear substance of the lifedome, like a sword blade.

  ‘The string has sliced into us from this side. I guess we can be grateful the relative velocity was actually quite low . . .’

  The string cut easily into the substance of the dome, like a hot wire into butter.

  Louise, watching in the silence of her room, felt as if the string were cutting into her own body; she imagined she could hear the shriek of lost air, the screams of her helpless human charges.

  Mark looked blank as his processors worked. He said rapidly, ‘The wake took a slice out of the hull tens of yards thick. Lethe. We’re losing a lot of air, Louise, but the self-repair systems are working well . . . A lot of our infrastructure has gone down quickly - too damn quickly; I think we need to take a look at our redundancies again, if we make it through this . . .’r />
  ‘And the Decks? What’s happening in there?’

  He hesitated. ‘I can’t tell, Louise.’

  She felt useless; the control panels in the room mocked her with their impotence. She felt the blame for this ghastly accident fall on her shoulders, like a tangible weight. I’m responsible for bollixing up those distance-evaluation routines. I’m responsible for insufficient redundancy - and for losing touch with Spinner-of-Rope in the cage, just when we need her most. If only I could talk to Spinner, maybe she could get us out of here. If only—

  ‘The geometry of the string is just as theory predicted,’ Mark said. ‘I’m getting measurements of pi in the regions around the string . . . 3.1402, compared to the flat-space value of 3.1415926 . . . The conical space has an angle deficit of four minutes of arc.

  ‘At this moment we have a quarter-mile length of string, actually inside the lifedome, Louise. That’s a total mass of four hundred billion billion tons.’ Mark looked bemused. ‘Life, Louise, think about that; that’s the mass of a fair-sized moon . . .’

  Her introspection was futile. The destruction of the lifedome could be - suddenly - mere seconds away. And, in the end, she was helpless. All I could do, in those last, frantic moments, was sound the damn klaxon . . .

  There was a whisper of spider-web light above Spinner. She could see how the string made the stars slide across the sky, just above the lifedome. The encroaching string was like the foregathering of some huge, supernatural storm around the Northern.

  Don’t be afraid . . .

  She twisted in her couch and tightened her restraints. ‘What in Lethe do you expect me to be?’ she yelled at Poole. ‘We’ve been hit by a length of cosmic string, damn it. This could finish us off. I have to get us out of here.’ She placed her hands on the waldoes. ‘But I don’t know what to do. Louise? Louise, can you hear me?’

  You know she can’t.

  Feverishly, Spinner said, ‘Maybe we’re already hit; maybe that’s why the connection went down. But what if she managed to program a routine into the waldoes before we lost the connection? Maybe—’