“Sorry,” said Liam.
“It’s perfectly fine. Now, could you please place your version of my crystal in the reader?”
Liam waited for the chronologist to remove her version, and then he placed his crystal in the grooved depression. It hovered and spun, and emitted its own series of light beams that synced with the map floating around them. The map zoomed in on five lights: four red and one yellow, blinking in a tight cluster. Again, Liam felt like he couldn’t quite see all there was to see.
The chronologist touched the yellow dot. The Milky Way galaxy came into view, zooming all the way into their old solar system. Seeing even just this little graphic of their former home caused Liam’s eyes to prickle.
Data scrolled around them, and that voice Liam and Phoebe had heard in the observatory on Mars spoke again: Infected star five exhibits the same abnormal growth pattern. . . .
“You said you’ve met one of the Drove?” asked the chronologist.
Liam nodded. “He said they were from somewhere called Dark Star. I wonder if that’s the city or ship we saw on the other side of the doorway.”
“And what kind of being was he?”
“Oh, um . . . I guess I don’t know. He was wearing a suit, and I couldn’t see his face. Two legs and two arms, though.”
“How was he communicating with you?”
“I’m not sure. I mean, I could understand him, so maybe he spoke my language? It happened in the timestream.”
“I see.” The chronologist kept studying the data. “Ah, okay, here it is, in the elemental analysis: they’re seeding the stars by injecting them with protomatter. Sort of like spraying a fire with a fire extinguisher, except from the inside out. This causes rapid fuel loss in the star, which leads to the supernova.”
“Not that rapid,” said Phoebe. “It took like forty years.”
“Forty years is fairly quick in the ten-billion-year life cycle of a star.” She checked her watch. “Well, this data will be invaluable as my colleagues attempt to determine what the Drove are trying to accomplish. However, I need to get going. My break is over.”
The chronologist zoomed the map back out, but stopped as a new green light began to flash on it. “Ah, good. My successor has located the next activation of that doorway.” Another light popped up, this one yellow. “And there is the correlating infected star and supernova. Interesting. . . .”
“What?”
“The Drove have advanced their methods since injecting your star. In this more recent attempt, they now seem to be able to cause star collapse in just under ninety-six hours.”
“They went from forty years to four days?” said Phoebe.
“Yes. That’s really not that out of the ordinary; technology tends to advance at an exponential rate.”
Liam peered at the map. This new light wasn’t that far from the one indicating their sun. “Which star is it?”
The chronologist spun her map around. “They only target main sequence yellow dwarf stars, like your sun. This new one is in a binary system.”
Liam’s chest tightened. “What’s it called?”
The chronologist checked her crystal. “You refer to it as Alpha Centauri A.”
“Our entire fleet is heading for Centauri B.”
“That is close enough that the supernova will have devastating effects.”
“When is it going to happen?” asked Phoebe. “Like right now?”
“No, the supernova will occur approximately thirty-three years from when you left your ship.”
Liam and Phoebe locked eyes. “That can’t be a coincidence,” said Phoebe. “The Drove must be trying to wipe us all out at once!”
“I have to admit,” said the chronologist, “that timing is more than a bit suspicious. That said, it is still possible that the Drove are merely targeting the most convenient star. Asuming they are coming and going from another universe, they might not even realize you exist, let alone that you are headed for that location.”
Liam’s heart raced. He thought of how the metal-suited man had offered to take him to Dark Star. That didn’t seem like something you’d say if you were planning to exterminate the human race. “But it won’t work,” he said. “Even at only ninety-six hours, the fleet will still have time to detect the supernova and change course. The Drove must know that.”
“But the Scorpius and the cruiser are flying blind,” said Phoebe.
“The fleet will send someone to intercept,” said Liam.
“Unless they’re too busy fighting my people,” said Phoebe.
“Can you get us back there?” said Liam.
The chronologist checked her watch again. “I believe I can.” She removed Liam’s version of the orange crystal from the reader, and the map blinked out. “I will make it the final function of this device. It will be fitting. Where should I deliver you?”
“The Scorpius?” said Liam.
“Our parents,” said Phoebe.
“Okay, but when? If we go back to where we left, we’ll just have to go into stasis for decades and hope we even got there in time.”
“Let me see.” The chronologist spread her arms and blew into the lights drifting above them. They swirled, scattering and darting. She pulled one close and pinched it. The light bloomed around her.
“What are you doing?” Liam asked.
“Reading your future,” said the chronologist.
“You’re— What does it say?” asked Phoebe.
The chronologist made a sound like a laugh. “I of course cannot tell you. Very curious. . . . All right.” She blew the light closed and then spun the map around them and pulled on a new area. “If I send you ahead in time, your bot will have piloted your ship and caught up to the Scorpius just prior to reaching Centauri B. I could place you on your ship at that point.”
Liam checked with Phoebe.
She nodded. “Then we can save the whole how did we magically appear on the Scorpius bridge part and just focus on the there’s an alien race tearing apart the universe part.”
“Okay,” said Liam. “Let’s do that.”
“Sounds good.” The chronologist tapped her many fingers over the orange crystal.
“I, um, have one more question,” said Liam. Something had occurred to him, something that was tightening his insides in a knot.
“I have one more answer.” The chronologist almost seemed to smile.
Liam couldn’t quite return it. “Would it be possible,” he asked quietly, “that because of the, um, subatomic change you saw in me, with the waves and particles or whatever—”
“Multiprobabilistic quantum behavior.”
“Sure, that. Could that make me, maybe, see part of my future?”
“You mean with the watch?”
“No, more like visions.”
“Are you talking about dreams?” Phoebe asked.
Liam’s throat was dry. “They don’t feel like dreams. And they happen while I’m awake.”
The chronologist peered at Liam. “That would be unprecedented, but possible.”
“Great.”
“What are you seeing?” Phoebe asked.
The image flashed through his head—the growing sun about to go nova, Phoebe, her face cold beside him in the skim drone. Except maybe that wasn’t actually the sun.
“I’ll tell you later.”
“Just remember,” said the chronologist, “what you see of the future is a function of probability until you actually get there. That said, this moment that you are seeing is likely a key probability node, perhaps even a keystone event for many timelines in the universe.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you are remembering it because it is important.”
“Remembering? But it’s—” Liam shook his head. “Okay. But how probable is it?”
She gave him what seemed to be a pitying look.
“What am I going to do?”
“You asked me this before, and what did I tell you?”
“
You mean about trust?”
Her thin hand patted him on the shoulder. “Indeed. Okay, time to go.” She held out the crystal. “It’s ready. Just press the top and bottom.”
Liam held up his wrist. “Do you want your watch back?”
The chronologist held up her own. “I already have it. As I believe you say: finders keepers.”
“Okay, um, thank you,” Liam said. “And good-bye.”
“I’m sorry,” said Phoebe.
“Please don’t be,” said the chronologist.
Phoebe took Liam’s hand. “Do we need to hug for this to work, too?”
“No,” said the chronologist, “I programmed it to take you both without using the hug function.”
Liam pressed the crystal between his fingers. Its top and bottom hemispheres spun in opposite directions, and a bright light washed out from its equator.
“Until next time,” said the chronologist.
“Wait, what next time?” Liam shouted over the rising wind.
But the chronologist, the crystal room, the field of drifting lights, and the eye-shaped nebula were all lost in white light.
14
DISTANCE TO CENTAURI B: 147,000 KM
Liam felt a wide space, like he was in a giant room, only the giant room was inside him. Completely dark, and cold—
“Liam?” he heard Phoebe call from somewhere impossibly far.
He blinked, and now there was a light in the darkness, growing rapidly, ballooning to fill the space. A great orange light. Lines sketched in around him. The geometry of a cockpit windshield, blinking controls. The skim drone. The growing star writhed with solar flares, would go nova at any moment— His heart began to race. Beside him was Phoebe, slumped over, her chest barely rising and falling, her alien skin now an even paler blue, like the ice of Delphi. He noticed too, that she was wearing the chronologist’s watch, which also sparkled with frost.
“Liam?”
He blinked and the orange faded. Dim light around him.
“Hey!”
It was Phoebe. For a second, he couldn’t feel his feet or hands or anything, like he had no body. Then all at once electric bolts seemed to jolt through him. He gasped and rolled in zero gravity, bumping against the wall. They were back in the main cabin of the Cosmic Cruiser. He was no longer holding the orange crystal, and it was nowhere to be found.
Sound was confusing, and at first he couldn’t hear anything, but he saw that Phoebe was mouthing something to him.
“What?” he shouted at her.
“We’re back!” it looked like she was saying.
Now he started to decipher what was wrong with his ears; there was tremendous noise all around him. The wailing of guitars and the pounding of synth drums and the electric knives of key filters.
Also his sister’s voice:
When I don’t know what’s up or down,
And you’re nowhere to be found
The Gravity Minus, Mina’s band, blaring through the ship. Meanwhile Liam had rotated and he was upside down, his head bumping the floor, which was shaking with the bass.
His insides spun, and suddenly he was going to vomit. He kicked for the bathroom, and barely made it to the toilet and hit the vacuum flush before barfing.
His vision prickled with spots. He breathed in deep, fighting back not only the nausea and its accompanying headache but also a frigid pool of fear inside him. The supernova he’d been seeing. Could it really be his future? Not the sun, but Centauri A. In the skim drone with Phoebe, too close to escape . . .
All along it had felt like more than a dream, more than some kind of miswiring from stasis. Because it was real. Or at least probable. And it was coming. Soon.
“Hey,” Phoebe shouted, leaning through the door. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Liam shouted back. “What’s with the music?”
Phoebe’s face was flushed like she wasn’t feeling so well either, but she grabbed his arm. “Come on, you’ve got to see.”
She pushed across the cabin, and Liam followed her to the cockpit. They stopped just at the entrance, peering in. The music was a little more bearable here. Liam’s eye was drawn out the windshield, where three stars gleamed like jewels before them: the Alpha Centauri system. The closest was Centauri B, pale and whitish blue, the size of a fingertip. Centauri A was slightly farther away, swollen and blood orange. And then much farther beyond that was a small deep red dot: Proxima.
JEFF was sitting at the controls, talking to himself, except it didn’t sound like JEFF.
“Rear thruster has shorted out again,” he said.
Then his voice shifted to a different pitch. “Is that a problem?” It shifted again to an even, purely analytical tone: “Spoken by Liam, age thirteen, son of Gerald and Lana, sibling of Mina.
“It would be if we needed to take off again,” JEFF said in his normal voice, “but hopefully this is the last trip this vehicle has to make.
“What’s that flashing? Spoken by Phoebe, age thirteen, daughter of Paolo and Ariana.”
“Checking diagnostics. . . .”
Liam glanced at Phoebe, eyebrows raised. JEFF had recorded their conversations? Except the voices for Liam and Phoebe weren’t theirs. These were more like transcripts that he was playing back, like reading a script.
“We’re trashing this poor ship, aren’t we?”
“HA HA HA.”
“JEFF!” Liam called over the blaring music.
“That’s only—” The conversation halted. For a moment, JEFF didn’t move, his eyes flickering; then he spun around. “Hello there!” He stood and magnetized his wheels to the floor.
“Hey, JEFF!” Liam shouted. “Turn it down!”
“Acknowledged!” JEFF tapped a button on the console and the music ceased. “Welcome back—” His voice shifted again, to that cold, analytical tone. “Facial recognition negative, gather secondary identity confirmation.”
“Why does he sound like that?” said Phoebe.
“Forgive me,” JEFF said in his normal voice again. “In order to better serve you, I must verify your identity. Please provide me with your colonial i-i-identification.” He held out his palm. “Your fingerprint will be adequate.”
Liam pressed his index finger against a subtle depression in the center of JEFF’s palm. “It’s me, JEFF. Liam. You were just listening to us talk. You’ve been our bot for, like, my whole life.”
JEFF’s eyes flickered. And flickered. . . . “Identity confirmed” he said. “Hello, Liam. Please confirm user settings. Would you like to continue using the assistant setting JEFF? Other options include JENNY, or MORGAN.”
“JEFF will be fine.”
“Acknowledged. Loading. . . .” His eyes flickered for another long moment. Then his whole panda body seemed to jolt. “My friends! I am quite pleased to see you again!”
“Thanks. Are you all right?”
“I am suitably op-p-perational.”
Liam considered the trio of stars out the window. “How long have we been gone?”
“It has been thirty-two years, three hundred and nineteen days, twenty-one hours, and forty-two minutes since active human links v-v-vanished from the local network. Mission logs indicate that you were those passengers who departed.”
His voice altered again. “Scan of ship and surrounding space negative. Primary function altered: seek medical treatment for injured adult passengers. Correction to course: none.”
“Yeah, that was us,” said Liam.
“My friends!” he said again. “I did not know what had happened to you!”
“JEFF,” said Liam, rubbing his plastic shoulder. “We had no idea we’d be gone for so long. We’re sorry.”
“Is that why you were playing back our conversations?” Phoebe asked.
JEFF’s eyes flickered. “Diagnostic records indicate that over the journey, my core storage circuits have developed a faulty code, affecting my memory. As more packets have become corrupted, I have been replaying our conversations daily, as a
way of reminding myself who you are. That way, I can refresh the code before it is permanently lost. However, other systems are beginning to s-s-suffer.”
“And you’ve been doing that for thirty-three years?”
“I initiated this subroutine twenty-four years, one hundred and eight days ago.”
“Is that why you’re listening to the Gravity Minus?”
“Oh, no. I just really like that band. The singer is very accomplished at pitch, and her lyrics convey a high degree of emotional depth.”
“That’s Mina singing,” said Liam. “My sister.”
JEFF’s eyes flickered again. “I . . . did not remember that! But now I have reconnected those pathways. Very good. Mina! Sibling of Liam. And who are the adults I am carrying to the location”—he turned and checked the navigation screen—“Destina? In the Alpha Centauri system?”
“Those are our parents,” said Liam.
“Excellent! That satisfies many correlative processors.”
“How are they?” Phoebe asked. “It was going to be risky, leaving them in stasis for so long.”
“They are alive and their vital signs and brain activity are stable. The concern will be their cognitive state and awareness when we actually wake them up.”
“Do you think it’s going to be bad?”
“I calculate that they will have a slow acclimation to consciousness and movement, but that in time they will regain normal function.”
Liam exhaled hard. “That is good news.”
“JEFF,” said Phoebe. “What else do you remember about me?”
More flickering. “You are Liam’s friend, and he b-b-believes, despite evidence to the contrary, that you are not a traitor to the human race nor a war criminal.”
Phoebe frowned. “Okay, so you didn’t forget everything.”
“Where have you been?” asked JEFF.
Liam explained their journey through space and time as best he could.
“I find certain elements of your story difficult to reconcile with the information in my l-l-logic libraries.”
“Yeah, well, so do we. How close are we to Destina?”
“We are four hours from arrival,” said JEFF. “I have determined that Destina is the second planet orbiting Centauri B. It is currently on the far side of the star. But I have a visual on the Scorpius, here.” He tapped the navigation screen, highlighting a small blinking light. “We are traveling at maximum velocity, and must begin to decelerate m-m-momentarily so that we can safely dock, but we should be within local link range very soon.”
The Oceans between Stars Page 20
