Resplendent

by Stephen Baxter

  And it got worse.

  Raoul had been summoned back to Earth, to appear before the Commission for Historical Truth. It was part of the great cleansing that had been pursued ever since the days after the fall of the Qax Occupation of Earth, when collaborators had been hunted down and judged. After a curt hearing, Raoul’s life’s work had been retrospectively labelled as counter to the evolutionary interests of mankind.

  His advisers had urged him to appeal. Everything he had done had been under the specific direction of legally constituted governments and inter-governmental bodies of the time. But he wasn’t about to justify himself to a bunch of children. He knew the true value of his legacy. After all, it had cost him his own humanity.

  And so sentence had been passed.

  ‘How did you and I get to be the bad guys, Ambassador?’

  The Ambassador’s perfect hide cast glimmering highlights from the tangle sliding past them. ‘We are old, Jack Raoul. Old and out of our time.’

  ‘That we are, my friend.’

  ‘Nevertheless, Jack Raoul, you have been a valuable interface between our species. Many sentient beings were saved from unhappiness and premature termination by your actions. This “punishment” is absurd and disproportionate. It is probably not even legal in your own terms.’

  ‘You’re storing up trouble,’ Raoul said. ‘Like it or not, I was tried by humanity’s highest court. If you intervene it will surely go badly for you; the Coalition is not noted for its forgiveness. As for me, maybe it’s my duty to sit tight and take my punishment. I will be the greater martyr for it.’

  ‘See what we offer you, Jack Raoul, before you turn it down for the sake of martyrdom.’

  At last, Raoul saw, their steady rise was slowing, the tangle of silver cables thinning out, as if they were reaching the top of a vast metallic tree. But there was still no sign of black, star-studded sky above; rather he made out swathes of light, glowing brightly, bright as the sun. Maybe the ship was actually sailing through the outer layers of a sun; it wouldn’t be the first time the Ghosts had pulled such a stunt.

  But the light, so his smart eyes quickly told him, was too complex for that. It was as if the sky was crowded with stars, every place he looked.

  And suddenly he understood. Olbers’ paradox . . .

  ‘Sink Ambassador. This teleportation technique of yours. It can carry you from one side of the universe to the other. Yes?’

  ‘Further than that.’

  ‘And the light that bathes us—’

  ‘It is starlight, Jack Raoul. Nothing but starlight.’

  Again he had the sense that someone called him. He ascended into the light, seeking the voice.

  ‘After several seconds the eyelids closed again, slowly and evenly, and the eyes took on the same appearance as before.

  ‘I called out again.

  ‘Once more, without any spasm, the lids lifted. Undeniably living eyes fixed themselves on mine with perhaps even more penetration than the first time. Then there was a further closing of the eyelids, but now less complete.’

  He looked down at the Ghost ship, a mass of entwined silvery cables with knots of life embedded everywhere, all of it glowing in the endless starlight. He could still make out the Sink Ambassador, a mercury droplet clinging to the tangle.

  But the structure was shrinking, closing on itself. The sky was a sphere of light, glowing white, and he felt he was being drawn away from the tangle, up into the light.

  ‘Olbers’ paradox,’ he whispered.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Ghost. ‘A key moment in the evolution of human thought, a philosophical fossil preserved by exiles through the Qax Extirpation . . . If the universe were infinite and static, every line of sight would meet the surface of a star, and the whole sky would be as bright as the surface of a sun. Even occluding dust clouds would soon become as hot as the stars themselves. That was evidently not so, observed those thinkers of old Earth. Therefore their universe could not be infinite or static.’

  ‘But here—’

  ‘But here, things are different. This appears to be a pocket universe, Jack Raoul. We believe it is a bubble of spacetime pinched off by a singularity. The heart of a black hole, perhaps.’

  ‘Infinite and static.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Raoul said. ‘If the whole sky is as hot as the surface of the sun - Ambassador, how do you keep cool?’

  The Ghost rolled, shimmering. ‘There is another pocket universe at the centre of the colony. Our heat is dumped there.’

  Raoul gaped. ‘You have a whole universe for a heat dump? And is that how the stars keep shining?’

  ‘We think so. Otherwise, immersed in this heat bath, simple thermodynamics would soon cause the stars to evaporate. We have only recently arrived here, Jack Raoul; there is much we have yet to explore. But it is clear to us that this cosmos is heavily engineered.’

  ‘Engineered? Who by?’

  ‘The Xeelee,’ the Ghost said.

  ‘Ah.’ The Xeelee: aloof from the petty squabbles of lesser kinds, even of sprawling, brawling humanity. The Xeelee, as remote as clouds.

  ‘It is not certain,’ said the Ghost. ‘But there are certain signatures we have come to recognise . . . Such universe-modelling does appear to be a characteristic Xeelee strategy.’

  Raoul laughed, wondering. ‘At last you’ve found yourselves an inverted sky, Ambassador. A Cold Sink.’ Considering their evolutionary history, shaped by cosmic betrayal and cold, this place was like a Ghost wish-fulfilment fantasy.

  ‘Yes. Jack Raoul, we believe we were led here, by the Xeelee. Perhaps they have prepared a bolt-hole of their own, in case their epochal war with the photino birds is ultimately lost.’

  ‘You see this place as a bolt-hole? What are you hiding from?’

  ‘You,’ said the Ambassador.

  That took him aback.

  ‘Jack Raoul, your Expansion is already expanding exponentially. We are in your way.’

  Raoul had heard this said. The Ghosts’ home range lay between mankind and the rich fields of the Galaxy’s Core, and the Expansion was pressing.

  But he protested, ‘It’s a big Galaxy. It’s not even as if we are fighting over the same kinds of territory, or resource. Ghosts are adapted to the cold and dark, humans to deep gravity wells. There is room for all of us.’

  ‘That is true,’ said the Ambassador. ‘But irrelevant. Your Expansion is fuelled by ideology as much as resource acquisition - and it is not an ideology that preaches of sharing. In such a situation there can be no diplomacy.

  ‘There is already war. A series of flashpoints, all along the Expansion’s growing border. Naturally we will use our every resource in our fight for survival, just as we did when our sun died. There will be epic battles. But the logic is against us. Our most optimistic projection is three thousand years.’

  ‘Until what?’

  ‘Until the Silver Ghosts are extinct.’

  Raoul said grimly, ‘I spent my life fighting against such outcomes, Ambassador. As did you. Are you telling me now it was all futile?’

  ‘From the beginning. But there is no failure, Jack Raoul. Here we have found a sanctuary. Though the Xeelee do not intervene in the squabbles of lesser types like us, they appear to embrace diversity. They gave us this place. Perhaps they have prepared a haven for your kind, against the inevitable day when humanity too must decline.’

  But Raoul found it increasingly hard to concentrate; his attention was drawn away from the Ghost and his words, away from the tangle, up to that infinite light.

  The Ghost spun on its invisible axis, this way and that. ‘Jack Raoul, I urge you to consider. If we are safe here, so are you. We can provide any Virtual environment you desire.’ The Ghost seemed to hesitate. ‘We can give you Eve.’

  Ah, Eve . . .

  You can ‘t stay. It was as if he could hear her voice, see her pushing her fingers through her greyed hair. You held on to me for too long. And now, this. Yo
u never could let go Jack. But now you have to. You see that, don’t you?

  He felt himself rise further. The tangle shrank beneath him, becoming lost in the light.

  It’s time to go, Jack.

  ‘The Sink Ambassador is a friend,’ he told Eve.

  ‘Jack Raoul?’

  Sure he’s a friend. That’s why he’s showing you what you want to see. You don’t want to die a failure. But it isn’t real. You know that, don’t you?

  Perhaps the Sink Ambassador somehow heard this inner voice. ‘Jack Raoul, it can be as real as you desire. We have only a single moment to give you. But we can make that moment last an eternity.’

  ‘Thank you, my friend. But this isn’t my place.’

  ‘Jack Raoul, please . . .’

  The tangle faded into the light. Raoul had time for a last, brief stab of regret.

  Then, artificial eyes raised, he ascended into the white glow that was calling him.

  ‘I attempted a third call, but there was no further movement. The eyes finally took on the glazed look of the dead.

  ‘The whole sequence of post-excision events lasted twenty-five to thirty seconds. More precise timings are of course available in the record.

  ‘Death occurred due to separation of the brain and spinal cord, after transection of the surrounding tissues and excision of the brain from the chest cavity, which probably caused acute and possibly severe pain. Consciousness was lost due to a rapid fall of intracranial perfusion of blood. Throughout the procedure nervous connections were maintained with sensory organs, notably the “eyes”, “ears” and “nose”.

  ‘As noted, Jack Raoul did not resist.

  ‘It may be that because of Raoul’s unique physical condition, this “beheading” was the only available mode of execution. However I believe that my precise observations during my administration of this case demonstrate that Raoul was aware of what was happening to him even after excision, thus casting doubt on the humanity of the procedure.

  ‘I will concede that I saw a certain peace, at the last, in Jack Raoul’s dying eyes. It may be that somehow he found consolation, which may in turn give comfort to those who passed sentence on this complex man.

  ‘Death occurred at the time and place noted.

  ‘Signed: HAMA TINIF, Attending Physician.’

  The Sink Ambassador was right. War was inevitable. The logic of the Third Expansion would have it no other way.

  At first human forces made spectacular advances. The Ghosts, capable of manipulating physical law, were on paper formidable adversaries. But we were better at making war.

  In the centuries of conflict that followed, the Coalition completed its control. Humanity’s ideology and economics were reoriented. Our entire civilisation became a machine to serve the Expansion and the war, and in turn became dependent on those two projects.

  But then, as we approached the Ghosts’ home ranges, the Expansion stalled.

  ON THE ORION LINE

  AD 6454

  The Brief Life Burns Brightly broke out of the fleet. We were chasing down a Ghost cruiser, and we were closing.

  The lifedome of the Brightly was transparent, so it was as if Captain Teid in her big chair, and her officers and their equipment clusters - and a few low-grade tars like me standing by - were just floating in space. The light was subtle, coming from a nearby cluster of hot young stars, and from the rivers of sparking lights that made up the fleet formation we had just left, and beyond that from the sparking of novae. This was the Orion Line - six thousand light years from Earth and a thousand lights long, a front that spread right along the inner edge of the Orion Spiral Arm - and the stellar explosions marked battles which must have concluded years ago.

  And, not a handful of klicks away, the Ghost cruiser slid across space, running for home. The cruiser was a rough egg-shape of silvered rope. Hundreds of Ghosts clung to the rope. You could see them slithering this way and that, not affected at all by the emptiness around them.

  The Ghosts’ destination was a small, old yellow star. Pael, our tame Academician, had identified it as a fortress star from some kind of strangeness in its light. But up close you don’t need to be an Academician to spot a fortress. From the Brightly I could see with my unaided eyes that the star had a pale blue cage around it - an open lattice with struts half a million kilometres long - thrown there by the Ghosts, for their own purposes.

  I had a lot of time to watch all this. I was just a tar. I was fifteen years old.

  My duties at that moment were non-specific. I was supposed to stand by, and render assistance any way that was required, most likely with basic medical attention should we go into combat. Right now the only one of us tars actually working was Halle, who was chasing down a pool of vomit sicked up by Pael, the Academician, the only non-Navy personnel on the bridge.

  The action on the Brightly wasn’t like you see in Virtual shows. The atmosphere was calm, quiet, competent. All you could hear was the murmur of voices, from the crew and the equipment, and the hiss of recycling air. No drama: it was like an operating theatre.

  There was a soft warning chime.

  The Captain raised an arm and called over Academician Pael, First Officer Till, and Jeru, the Commissary assigned to the ship. They huddled close, conferring - apparently arguing. I saw the way flickering nova light reflected from Jeru’s shaven head.

  I felt my heart beat harder.

  Everybody knew what the chime meant: that we were approaching the fortress cordon. Either we would break off, or we would chase the Ghost cruiser inside its invisible fortress. And everybody knew that no Navy ship that had ever penetrated a Ghost fortress cordon, ten light-minutes from the central star, and come back out again.

  One way or the other, it would all be resolved soon.

  Captain Teid cut short the debate. She leaned forward and addressed the crew. Her voice, cast through the ship, was friendly, like a cadre leader whispering in your ear. ‘You can all see we can’t catch that swarm of Ghosts this side of the cordon. And you all know the hazard of crossing a cordon. But if we’re ever going to break this blockade of theirs we have to find a way to bust open those forts. So we’re going in anyhow. Stand by your stations.’

  There was a half-hearted cheer.

  I caught Halle’s eye. She grinned at me. She pointed at the Captain, closed her fist and made a pumping movement. I admired her sentiment but she wasn’t being too accurate, anatomically speaking, so I raised my middle finger and jiggled it back and forth.

  It took a slap on the back of the head from Jeru, the Commissary, to put a stop to that. ‘Little morons,’ she growled.

  ‘Sorry, sir—’

  I got another slap for the apology. Jeru was a tall, stocky woman, dressed in the bland monastic robes said to date from the time of the founding of the Commission for Historical Truth a thousand years ago. But rumour was she’d seen plenty of combat action of her own before joining the Commission, and such was her physical strength and speed of reflex I could well believe it.

  As we neared the cordon the Academician, Pael, started a gloomy countdown. The slow geometry of Ghost cruiser and tinsel-wrapped fortress star swivelled across the crowded sky. Everybody went quiet.

  The darkest time is always just before the action starts. Even if you can see and hear what is going on, all you do is think. What was going to happen to us when we crossed that intangible border? Would a fleet of Ghost ships materialise all around us? Would some mysterious weapon simply blast us out of the sky?

  I caught the eye of First Officer Till. He was a veteran of twenty years; his scalp had been burned away in some ancient close-run combat, long before I was born, and he wore a crown of scar tissue with pride. ‘Let’s do it, tar,’ he growled.

  All the fear went away. I was overwhelmed by a feeling of togetherness, of us all being in this crap together. I had no thought of dying. Just: let’s get through this. ‘Yes, sir!’

  Pael finished his countdown.

  All the lights
went out. Detonating stars wheeled.

  And the ship exploded.

  I was thrown into darkness. Air howled. Emergency bulkheads scythed past me, and I could hear people scream.

  I slammed into the curving hull, nose pressed against the stars.

  I bounced off and drifted. The inertial suspension was out, then. I thought I could smell blood - probably my own.

  I could see the Ghost ship, a tangle of rope and silver baubles, glinting with highlights from the fortress star. We were still closing. We were going to collide in minutes, no more.