Greg Bear - [Eon Trilogy 1] - Eon (rescan) (v1.0)

by Neal Asher

  "Advisor wants you?"

  Lanier patted his coat pocket. "Priority. But I have to make sure Vasquez is going to work out." He turned toward the hatchway.

  "I'll be waiting," Heineman called after. He looked at the tuberider and V/STOL, eyes bright.

  *8*

  Lanier escorted Carrolson in a truck to the seventh chamber. In the tunnel, Carrolson turned on the cab light and removed a pouch from the box in her lap. "Give electronics high marks this week," she said. "Patricia asked for something and they got it to me in twenty-four hours."

  "What is it?"

  "You really want to know? It might upset you."

  He smiled. "It's my job to be upset."

  "She asked for a meter to check out local values of pi, Planck's constant—slash aitch, rather—and the gravitational constant. Electronics threw in speed of light, ratio of proton mass to electron mass, and neutron decay time. I don't know whether she'll use them all, but she's got them."

  "Sounds pretty high-tech to me."

  "I asked how they managed to squeeze some of the tests into a package this size. They smiled and said they've been building defense satellites for CSOC for years, and the multi-meter was easy in comparison. They scavenged circuits from some surplus security devices. I don't know how it works, but it does. At least, it seems to. Look." She pushed a button marked with the Greek letter pi. The luminous display read "3.141592645 stable."

  "My calculator will do that."

  "It won't tell you if pi changes."

  "So who's this billed to?"

  "Science, of course. Is there no poetry in your soul—does everything reduce to billing?"

  "It's in my blood. Anyway, remove it from science and charge it to a new, special category. Mark that category 'Vasquez' and keep the expenditures confidential."

  "Yes, sir." Carrolson put the multi-meter back in its felt bag as they came down the ramp into the tubelight. "Will she be expensive?"

  "I don't know. I want to separate science in the first six chambers from anything done here. I'll be back on Earth in a couple of days, and part of my time may be spent arguing money with senators and congressmen. It's a complicated subject."

  "My curiosity is checked," Carrolson said. "You think she'll work out?"

  Lanier cast a peeved glance at her. "Don't you start. Give her whatever she wants, treat her kindly, keep her on the straight and narrow after I'm gone. She'll do fine."

  "Because the Advisor says?"

  Lanier halted the truck near the tent. "She seems to get along well with Farley. If something important drags you away, what say we have Farley chaperone her? Even if she is Chinese."

  "I don't foresee any problems there."

  "Nor I. You'll take Vasquez back and forth to the libraries, with a military escort, not Farley. That's my only stipulation."

  "Fine. Now for some real sore points," Carrolson said.

  "What?"

  "The Russians are grumbling about pulling out their members. If the Russians go, my sources tell me the Chinese might pull out as well. A knee-jerk response. They've been complaining, too, and they don't want anyone to think they're more gullible than the Russians."

  "Hell, Farley's been feeding them stuff about the seventh chamber for months now. That doesn't keep them happy?"

  "No. The Russians know the basics, too."

  "The hell with all of them," Lanier grumbled. "That sums it up."

  "Admirably." Carrolson grinned.

  "Just make sure Patricia doesn't talk to anyone she shouldn't."

  "Got you."

  "Including you."

  Carrolson bit her lower lip, crossed herself and shook her head fervently. "Hope to die. Seriously, aren't I just about due for my upgrade?"

  "I hope to bring it back with me. I'll be talking with Hoffman. Patience."

  "Patience is," Carrolson said.

  Lanier stared at her sternly, eyes flickering back and forth across her face. Then he cracked a broad smile and reached up to touch her shoulder. "Our watchword. Thank you."

  "De nada, boss."

  Wu approached the truck as Carrolson and Lanier stepped down. "Expedition to the second circuit is back," he said. "They're about sixty kilometers away. Security has them on track, and messages have been relayed."

  "Good," Lanier said. "Let's get ready for the homecoming."

  The second expedition consisted of four trucks and twenty-six people. Sitting near the dwarf forest, Patricia watched the column of dust as the vehicles approached. She picked up her slate and the processor and strolled back to the camp.

  Two more trucks entered from the sixth chamber tunnel, rumbling and whanging down the ramp. They parked by the tent and Berenson—commander of the German security forces, and now in charge of security in the seventh chamber stepped down from one, Rimskaya and Robert Smith from the other. Rimskaya nodded cordially at Patricia as he passed by. His mood's improved, she thought.

  Lanier and Carrolson emerged from the shadow of the tent overhang.

  "How far did they go?" Patricia asked Lanier.

  "Nine hundred and fifty-three kilometers—half battery range." He held the felt-bagged instrument out to her. "Your multi-meter. We've logged it into the equipment list, and now it's yours. Treat it carefully. Electronics won't be able to duplicate it quite as quickly."

  "Thank you," Patricia said. She removed the instrument and the instructions on a folded slip of paper. Carrolson looked over Patricia's shoulder.

  "It has a range of about ten centimeters," she commented. "Strictly local."

  Rimskaya came up behind them and cleared his throat. "Miss Vasquez," he said.

  "Yes, sir?" Old habits die hard.

  "How do you like the problem?"

  "It's marvelous," she said, her tone level. "It will take time to solve—if it can be solved."

  "Certainly," Rimskaya said. "I trust you have become aware of our hypotheses?"

  "Yes. They've been helpful." They had been, too. She didn't want to overstress the point, however.

  "Good. You've been to the singularity?"

  She nodded. "I wish I'd had the multi-meter." She passed it to him and he examined the device, shaking his head.

  "A fine idea. I see you are making progress. Much better than I. That is as it should be. There is a gentleman on the expedition who might be able to help you more. His name is Takahashi, the expedition's second-in-command. A very experienced theorist. I trust you've read some of our joint papers."

  "Yes. Very interesting."

  Rimskaya fixed his stern gaze on her for an uncomfortably long five or ten seconds, then nodded. "I must speak with Farley now," he said, walking away.

  The expedition trucks parked twenty meters from the camp. Lanier walked out to meet them. Carrolson stayed with Patricia. "That's as far as we've gone down the corridor," she said. "From what they radioed back, we still haven't found much."

  The arrival was something of an anticlimax. Nobody left the vehicles; and one by one, at Lanier's instructions, they moved past the camp and up the ramp into the tunnel, vanishing into the sixth chamber.

  Lanier returned with three memory blocks. He gave one to Carrolson and one to Patricia, pocketing the third. "Expedition report, unedited," he said. "Nothing spectacular, according to Takahashi, except..."

  He glanced behind him, down the corridor.

  "Yes?" Carrolson urged.

  "The second circuit is more than just floating cupolas. There are openings beneath the cupolas. They appear to be wells of some sort. They didn't find out where the wells lead, but they're definitely open."

  "Then the corridor has holes," Carrolson said. "All right, Patricia, it's time we made plans for a trip to the first circuit.

  When are you going to be free?"

  Patricia took a small breath and shook her head. "Any time. I can work wherever I am."

  "Make it day after tomorrow," Lanier said. "Patricia and I have to spend some time in the library." He discreetly gestured to Carrols
on: time to leave. She made her excuses and glanced back at them as she entered the tent.

  "Part two of the indoctrination will begin next shift," he said. "The most difficult part of all. Are you ready for it?"

  "I don't know," she said, feeling her chest contract. "I must be. I've survived so far."

  "Good. Meet me at the ramp in twelve hours."

  *9*

  The Axis City had moved a million kilometers down the corridor since its construction five centuries ago. Olmy and the Frant had covered that distance in less than a week, flying their craft in a smooth stretched spiral around the plasma tube.

  In the history of the Thistledown and the Way, no one had ever entered the asteroid from the outside.

  Olmy and the Frant had surveyed the Thistledown's new occupants for two weeks and had learned a great deal. They were indeed human, and not even Korzenowski himself could have expected what Olmy now knew.

  The Thistledown had come full circle. Geshels had warned there might be displacement, but no one had suspected what kind of displacement, or what the results might be.

  Having completed his principal duties for the Nexus, Olmy then turned off his data and mission recorders and returned to his old home in the third chamber. The cylindrical apartment building where his triad family had lived, where he had spent two years of his childhood, stood right at the edge of Thistledown City, not quite a kilometer from the northern cap. Once, the building had held twenty thousand people, chiefly Geshels, technicians and researchers employed on the Sixth Chamber Project. It had then served as temporary home for hundreds of orthodox Naderites expelled by the Nexus from Alexandria. Now, of course, it was empty; there was no evidence it had even been visited by the asteroid's new occupants.

  Olmy walked across the lobby and stood near the credit counter, one eyebrow lowered as if in puzzlement. He turned to the broad illusart window and spotted the Frant in the courtyard, sitting patiently on an empty light-sculpture pedestal. The window made it appear that the Frant was in a luxurious Earth garden, complete with glowing sunset. The Frant would appreciate that, Olmy thought.

  He picted graphicspeak at the credit counter and received a confidential response: the apartment was blocked, as were all apartments in the building. None could be occupied or even viewed until the present interdict was revoked.

  Those orders had been issued after the last of the Naderite families had been transferred from the cities. Only public buildings had been left open for the use of the last scholars, finishing their exodus studies. The Earth people had already put some of those facilities to use, the Thistledown City Library chief among them.

  He picted a Nexus coded icon into the credit counter and said aloud, "I have authorization to temporarily revoke interdict."

  "Authorization recognized," the counter replied.

  "Open and decorate unit three seven nine seven five."

  "What decor do you wish?"

  "As it was when occupied by the Olmy-Secor-Lear Triad family."

  "You are of that family?" the counter asked politely.

  "I am."

  "Searching. Decoration completed. You may ascend."

  Olmy took the lift. In the round cloud-gray hallway, walking a few inches above the floor, he felt a most unfamiliar and unpleasant emotional tug—the long-past pain of dreams forgotten or lost, of youthful hopes destroyed by political necessity.

  He had lived so long his memories seemed to contain the thoughts and emotions of many different people. But one set of emotions still transcended the others, and one ambition remained foremost. He had worked for centuries on behalf of the ruling Geshels and Naderites, never playing favorites, that someday he might be allowed this opportunity.

  His apartment number glowed red at the base of the circular door, the only glowing number in the hallway. He entered and stood for a moment in the surroundings of his childhood, engaged in a brief moment of nostalgia. The furnishings and decor were all here, reflecting his natural father's attempt to duplicate the apartment they had been driven from in Alexandria. They had spent two years here, awaiting decisions on their case before their triad family could be moved to the newly finished Axis City.

  They had been the last family to live in these buildings, and Olmy had had considerable opportunity to explore the coop memory and experiment with programming. Even in his childhood, he had shown a proclivity for things technical that dismayed his orthodox Naderite parents. And what he had discovered in the building's memory five centures ago, quite by accident, had changed the direction of his life...

  He sat in his father's sky-blue chair before the apartment data pillar. Such pillars were now obsolete in the Axis City, used only as charming antiques, but he had spent hundreds of hours as a child in front of this very device and found it familiar and comfortable to work with. Picting his own coded icons, he activated the pillar and opened a custom channel to the building's memory. Once, the memory had served the needs of thousands of tenants, keeping their records and acting as a depository for millions of possible decor variations. Now it was virtually blank; Olmy had the impression of swimming in a vast dark hollowness.

  He picted a stack and register number and waited for coded questions to be picted. As each appeared before him, he answered precisely and correctly.

  In the hollowness, there appeared a presence, fragmented, grievously incomplete, but powerful and recognizable even so.

  "Ser Engineer," Olmy said aloud.

  My friend. The nonvocal communication was level and strong, if toneless. Even incomplete, Konrad Korzenowski's personality and presence were commanding.

  "We've come home."

  Yes? How long since you last spoke to me?

  "Five hundred years."

  I am still dead...

  "Yes," Olmy said softly. "Now listen. There is much you must know. We've come home, but we are not alone. The Thistledown has been reoccupied. It is time for you to come with me now...

  *10*

  Patricia and Lanier passed through the fence and security checks, entered the second chamber library and followed the strips of lights across the empty floor and up the stairs. On the fourth floor, they entered the reading area with its dark cubicles. Lanier sat her down in the lighted cubicle and went off into the stacks, leaving her alone to again feel the chill, the spookiness that seemed—even amid all the strangeness—reserved for the library alone. When he returned, he held four thick books in his arms.

  "These are among the last books printed for mass distribution, before all information services became solid state. Not on the Stone, but on Earth. Their Earth. I suppose you've already guessed what sort of library this is."

  "A quaint one. A museum," she said.

  "Right. An antique library, better suited to those with antique habits, no? When you get to the third chamber library, you'll become acquainted with the Stoners' state-of-the-art systems."

  He held out the first volume. It was printed in a style similar to that of the Mark Twain book, but with heavier boards and thick, even tougher plastic paper. She read the spine. "'Brief History of the Death, by Abraham Damon Farmer'." She opened to the printing history and read the date. "2135. Our calendar?"

  "Yes."

  "Are they talking about the Little Death?" she asked hopefully.

  "No."

  "Something else," she murmured. She read the chronology heading the first chapter. " 'From December 1993 to May 2005.' " She closed the book on her thumb. "Before I read any more, I want to ask a question."

  "Ask away." He waited, but it took her some time to phrase it properly in her head.

  "These are history books about a future, not necessarily our own, correct?"

  "Yes."

  "But if this chronology is ... right, appropriate ... if it could possibly be our future ... then there's going to be a catastrophe in less than a month."

  He nodded.

  "I'm supposed to prevent it? How? What the hell can I do?"

  "I don't know what any of us
can do. We're already working on that angle. If ... a big if ... it's going to happen at all. At any rate, it should be obvious to you, as you read these books, that the Stone's universe is not the same as ours in at least one important respect."

  "And that is ...?"

  "In the Stone's past, no giant asteroid starship returned to the Earth-Moon vicinity."

  "That might make a difference?"