by Joe Horan
At length Prior Helena rose to her feet.
“The next part is for Steph Campbell only,” she said. “The rest of you can continue to enjoy the hospitality of the Ractaz. This year’s wine is particularly good. Rooms are being prepared; they will be ready shortly. Princess Desiree, you really do not need to carry your sword and bow here. You are among friends.”
“I don’t want to lose them,” she said. As a general principle, when they wanted you to give up your weapons that was the time to hang onto them.
The men would probably be content to stay and try the particularly good wine. Steph followed Prior Helena. They went up a set of wooden stairs to the next deck above – if she was a warship she would have had metal ladders when she was in service – and forward along the starboard wing passage; it was amazing how the standard spacefleet terminology was automatically returning. The layout was identical to the deck below, and the first compartment had been furnished with a large desk, comfortable chairs and along the far bulkhead a large glass-fronted cabinet.
“Sit down please,” said Prior Helena, indicating the chair in front of the desk.
She produced a bunch of keys, unlocked the cabinet and took something out.
“This is the Book of The Ancestors, the Book of Ultimate Truth,” she said. “It is written in a language that no one has been able to read for more than five hundred years.”
She turned and placed it on the desk before her. It was small, plain, fairly slim little book, apparently made of thin plastifilm. It looked like a cheap paperback that had lost its cover.
“Read it if you can.”
Steph opened it.
There were four major languages in the League of Planets; Atumcarian, Thispholotian, Tharrian and Legarian. To serve in the modern Atumcarian Spacefleet you needed to have at least a working knowledge of all four. The square, blocky script told her this was Tharrian. Not her favourite language – the harsh, guttural sounds could give you a sore throat if you weren’t careful – but she could read it reasonably well.
There was no title; it just started at the top of the page…
The train had been stationary just outside the station for half an hour now. Jenni glanced at her watch again. 9·20. The meeting was due to start at 9·00. Another announcement that the train would be moving in the next minute or so. They had been doing that regularly for the last twenty minutes, and still they hadn’t moved.
She skipped through the next couple of paragraphs. No taxis. Pouring with rain. She had to run to Bromley & Styles using a newspaper as an umbrella.
It was 9·45 when she emerged from the elevator on the eighth floor.
“The meeting started at nine,” hissed her assistant Sue urgently. “You’d better go in.”
She tried to slip through the door and take her seat unobserved, but of course Mr. Bromley spotted her.
“It seems Ms Raymond has been delayed by women’s problems,” he said loudly. Everyone laughed, even the two women sitting at the table. The first thing you learnt when you started at Bromley & Styles was always to laugh when Mr Bromley thought he had made a joke.
Suddenly Jenni had enough, enough of working fourteen hours a day with no thanks, enough of the constant sexist jokes, enough of Mr Bromley. She stood up.
“You’re a fat, bald, misogynist pig,” she said. “You can stick your rotten job. I quit.”
She walked towards the door.
“If you walk through that door, Ms Raymond, you’ll never work in this town again.”
She walked through it anyway.
Good for you, sister!
She turned on a couple of pages. Now Jenni was in a bar, sobbing her little heart out into a glass of Stylax while a handsome young singer sang sad songs of lost love.
“I’d like to dedicate this next song to the beautiful, sad young lady at table five.”
You slime! Hitting on a woman when she’s at her most vulnerable.
She turned on another couple of pages. Now he’s got her in bed. Good grief, he’s a fast worker. It’s only page 18.
It took twelve pages to describe what happened next, and some of it made Steph blush. Explicit barely described it. She quickly turned over the pages.
Page 33. Now she’s setting up her own business with her old assistant Sue and her new boyfriend Mattheus.
Page 35. They’re doing it beside the swimming pool now. Aren’t they afraid the neighbours will see?
Page 46. Here comes the psycho ex-girlfriend. She’s dating a mobster now and she’s determined to get back at Mattheus for leaving her.
Page 55. Jenni’s been kidnapped! You can write this stuff by numbers. I don’t have to read the rest of the book to know what’s going to happen. Mattheus is going to save Jenni, Sue’s going to find happiness with that bumbling cop who hasn’t got a clue what’s going on and the psycho ex-girlfriend’s going to jail. Book of Ultimate Truth my ass! I’ve read a hundred of these.
She closed it and pushed it away.
“Well?” said Prior Helena.
“This is no Book of Ultimate Truth,” she said. “It’s a trashy romance novel.”
“You can read it?”
“Yes, I can read it.”
“Then Ultimate Truth is revealed. You are from the stars.”
“So this was all a test?” said Steph.
“Of a sort.”
“Did you know what this book is?”
“No, but we knew what it could not be. No race that could build this ship and journey among the stars would record their deepest secrets in a book such as this. So we gave it a name – The Book of Ultimate Truth – and invited all who wished to come and read it. Many tried. Some claimed they could. All showed themselves stunned by the wisdom, overwhelmed by the knowledge, secrets unspeakable that they dared not reveal even to us. We thanked them for their time and sent them on their way. Then you showed it the contempt we knew it deserved and at last our long wait was over. The Ancestors have returned. Now come with me.”
They walked slowly forward towards the bow.
“The Ractaz crashed on this world about six hundred years ago with two thousand two hundred souls on board,” said Prior Helena. “The survivors crossed the mountains and reached the plains to the south, where they started to grow crops. At first it was a struggle for survival. All technology was lost within one generation and they descended into barbarity. There was violence, bloodshed, slavery. Men battled over what resources there were, including women who were viewed as mere possessions. They developed beliefs in cruel and vindictive gods who must be appeased by constant rituals or the sun would not rise in the morning, winter would not give way to spring. They split into a number of warring groups, from which eventually came the three kingdoms. A few of us who had remained with the Ractaz were appalled by what was happening. Protected by the mountains, we made it our purpose to safeguard the knowledge we once had in case the time ever came when it would be needed.
“Then something extraordinary happened. One of the kingdoms began to change. Someone, we do not know who, wrote down the Five Truths and the Ochirans took them to heart. They turned away from superstitious fear and realised the World was governed, not by capricious gods, but by unchangeable natural laws. They wrote a law that guaranteed freedom and equality to every man and woman, that made it the duty of all citizens to help those in need. In one generation they broke the chains of darkness and learnt to live as free people.
“It took us by surprise. Isolated in our mountain retreat, we did not realise what was happening until it had occurred. As soon as we knew, we started to send them texts on science and mathematics. We used our position as Guardians of Knowledge to negotiate a truce between the warring kingdoms so they could have peace. We watched as they sought a logical explanation for why the sun rose in the morning and discovered that the World was a sphere rotating in space and it travelled round the sun. They were trying to measure the distance to the stars and were close to realising that they were suns like their own
…
“And then King Shalmazar tore up a treaty that had held for three hundred years and attacked Ochira. We could do nothing except watch as his army advanced, besieged the city and then – well, you know what happened. We shall speak of it shortly. Suffice it to say that your arrival was most fortuitous. As soon as we suspected what you were we sent word to Ochira City that you were to come here as soon as possible. We could not even wait until spring. The situation is most urgent.”
They came to the control room, brightly lit by many lamps, and on the auxiliary power terminal a single red light glowed. Steph wondered at that. The power banks should be completely dead by now, but it seemed some residual charge remained. Prior Helena turned to face her, suddenly looking very serious.
“We need your assistance,” she said.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Ten se’ennights ago we would have asked your advice on how we could filter scientific knowledge into Ochiran society safely. However, the situation has changed. Just after the autumn equinox we were struck by a cataclysm from space. We do not understand what it was, but it has caused considerable damage and we believe there is worse to come. Some of our instruments still work. This one, we believe, measures radiation in the atmosphere.”
She touched one of the controls and a monitor came to life. Steph looked at the numbers on it. They read 26·2, and as she watched they changed to 26·3.
“Until last autumn’s upheaval this number varied between one and two for the past six hundred years. Now it is rising steadily. We do not know at what level it is dangerous, but if it continues rising it must eventually become so.”
“Ten is the level at which a planet would not be considered for colonisation,” said Steph. “If it reaches sixty an emergency evacuation would be initiated. At two hundred there would be adverse health effects unless anti-radiation medication was administered. At five hundred radiation suits would be needed. At one thousand unprotected exposure would lead to rapid death.”
“Then it is as we feared,” said Prior Helena. “We know this ship can never fly again, and if it could there are far more people now on the World than could ever be accommodated. However we have identified a communications device, but we cannot get it to work.
Tachyons. It needs tachyons, which means we need the tachyon generator, which means we need auxiliary power, which means flashing up an auxiliary reactor. It’s impossible. It can’t be done. They’ve been sitting there for six hundred years. The seals will blow straight away. I’d have more luck fixing the engines. At least I’d know where to start; I’m a drive specialist, not a com tech.
“We’ve identified sixteen energy storage cells as well,” said Prior Helena. “We’ve coupled a waterwheel to a generator and have been using it to keep them charged.”
So the power banks are fully charged; that’s not the point. You can’t run the tachyon generator off the power banks. You just can’t draw enough power. It’s a reactor or nothing.
Unless…
The pod! Its generator is a fraction of the size. It should run off the power banks on a ship this size. It will take an hour to make enough tachyons to send one message, but it could be done.
She explained the situation to Prior Helena as quickly as possible.
“How big is it?” she asked.
“About five kilograms. I’d better bring the stasis unit as well. About twelve kilograms, including the control boxes and constrictor coils.”
“It means going down to Ochira City and back again in the winter. We daren’t wait till spring. You should be able to get out all right, but by the time you come back the mountain passes will probably be closed.”
“I’m sure Princess Desiree will say that we shall manage somehow,” said Steph.
If she could start the drive she might be able to fly the pod to the Ractaz, but she didn’t mention that. It was a remote possibility; she remembered the damage indicators on the lower field coils. It they were anything more than slightly out of alignment it would need specialised equipment to realign them.
It took a long time to explain the situation to Desiree. A very long time. More correctly, it took a very long time to get her to accept the situation. Steph couldn’t have done it by herself; she would probably have ended up impaled on Desiree’s sword. It took the authority of Prior Helena and the monks of the Ractaz to convince her that the World was dying and they had to call for help from the stars.
They left at first light the following morning. Before they departed, Desiree took Steph aside and said, “Do you think you could ride a faster horse?”
“Yes,” she said and regretted it instantly, but it was too late.
The horse they gave her was not the high-spirited animal Desiree rode, but it was a bit livelier than the tired old hacks she was used to. There was an element of clinging on for dear life about it, but at least it kept her mind off the possibility of another ambush. They had five soldiers and Desiree for protection and if there were any brigands in the mountains they kept clear. Possibly no one wanted to tangle with the crazy bitch with a sword.
They arrived at Chale to find the town in confusion. On his way through to Ochira City the monks’ messenger had informed the garrison commander of Governor Pander’s treachery. Commander Sarron was a loyal man well known to the monks; he immediately declared martial law and arrested the governor for treason. Desiree dispensed summary justice.
“He’s guilty. Hang him.”
She appointed Commander Sarron interim governor and they were off the following morning. There was no slowly moving convoy this time. They posted it down to Ochira City, which meant they went from inn to inn, changing horses regularly and relying on the cry of “Make way for Princess Desiree of Ochira!” to get quick service and the fastest mounts. Steph had quite a few terrifying experiences lately, but possibly thundering along the road at full speed clinging desperately to the neck of her horse topped them all.
The next day they met about fifty armed men riding along the road towards them as hard as possible. Steph instinctively pulled hard on the reigns and managed to bring her horse to a halt. Not so Desiree…
“To me!” she yelled, unsheathing her sword and spurring her horse forward. The soldiers formed up on her, two to her right and three to her left. Steph couldn’t believe it. The crazy bitch with a sword actually intended to charge head-on into a group of fifty armed men.
But the horsemen were slowing. The leader was holding his arm horizontally in front of his chest, hand open to show he held no weapon. Next to him another man held up a flag; the world with the lions and the crown. Desiree slowed her mount, sheathed her sword and trotted forward.
“Well met, warriors of Ochira,” said the captain. “We are sent by Prince Joaquin, my lady. Thank the Ancestors we find you safe.”
“My brother!” exclaimed Desiree furiously. “King Shalmazar and all the Kaun army could not slay me. Did he think one jumped-up governor with delusions of grandeur would do so?”
Joaquin had inevitably panicked on hearing of the threat to his sister’s life and sent a company of fifty men with orders to find her and protect her at any cost. Desiree was exasperated at this, but she sent them on to Chale to place themselves under the interim governor’s orders.
They resumed their headlong ride south. Steph, who had taken advantage of the halt to get her breath and calm her racing heart, found herself clinging to the back of a galloping horse once again.
It was the evening of the seventh day when they rode through the gates of Ochira City, possibly an all-time record for the journey. Steph, having been rigid with terror for the entire trip, finally relaxed and dropped off her horse like a sack of grain. Joaquin came running out to meet them. He greeted his sister with more than the usual brief hug; he held her tight and said, “I’m sorry, Desiree. I just wanted to make sure you’re safe. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.”
“You’d carry on for the sake of Ochira and our people,” she said. “Now
listen. I’ve something important to tell you.”
She explained the situation to him in a lot less time than it had taken to explain it to her. It would sound preposterous coming from anyone except his sister, but so much had happened in the past few se’enights that nothing seemed impossible now.
Meanwhile Steph staggered to her feet and stared in amazement. Lying on its side just inside the gate, with three soldiers standing guard over it, was her escape pod. That makes things a bit easier, she thought, then fell down again.
Kerri came running out, grabbed two passing servants and had them carry Steph up to her room. She then chased the men out, undressed Steph, washed her down with a wet sponge and put her to bed. Steph was barely aware what was happening and was asleep almost at once, but before she knew it she was being shaken awake.
Shania continued her work. It was very hard not to tell her co-workers what she knew, particularly as the results of their calculations became more and more certain. The World was dying; what the equations didn’t tell them was why it was dying. That was a distinctive feature of the form of probability theory they were using. In the meantime a letter arrived from her family. They were all right, but the farm was wrecked and the harvest was destroyed. They could plant most of the fields for next season, but until the crops matured they would have to rely on the daily ration to survive. She wrote back to say she was glad they were all right. She couldn’t possibly say not to bother planting crops; the World would end before they were ready for harvest.
Then one evening an off-duty cartographer rushed in with the startling news that Princess Desiree and the Ancestor had ridden through the gates of Ochira City, exhausted after posting south as fast as possible. Nyassa immediately found Shania and her team.
“Come with me, Shania,” she said. “Bring your latest predictions.”
Outside the Institute’s carriage waited. Shania got in, clutching a sheaf of papers rolled up and secured with a piece of string. Nyassa got in with her.
