This was the terrible friction that had rubbed away the life of Mara, and countless other refugees.
‘And now,’ Futurity said, ‘they are cleaning out the last Ideocracy enclaves in the Core.’
‘Ah. Like Mara’s world.’
‘Yes. There isn’t much the Ideocracy can do, short of all-out war. As for us,’ Futurity went on, ‘the Ecclesia is just trying to keep the peace.’ Through their faith the Ecclesia’s acolytes and academics had links that crossed the new, shifting political boundaries. ‘Michael Poole, the Wignerian faith was never legal under the Coalition, but it spanned the Galaxy, and in its way unified mankind. It survived the Coalition’s fall. Now, despite our fractured politics, and even though the faith itself has schismed and schismed again, it still unites us - or at least gives us something to talk to each other about. And it provides a moral, civilising centre to our affairs. If not for the faith’s moderating influence, the fall of the Coalition would have been much worse for most of humanity.’
Mara’s fate was an example. Wignerian diplomatic links had been used to set up a reasonably safe passage for Ideocracy refugees from the Core. Thus at places like Base 478 refugees like Mara were passed off from one authority to another, following a chain of sanctuaries out of the Core to their new homes in the remote gloom of the rim.
Poole seemed cynical about this. ‘A service for which you charge a handsome fee, no doubt.’
Futurity was stung. ‘We’re not a rich world, Michael Poole. We rely mostly on donations from pilgrims to keep us going. We have to charge the refugees or their governments for transit and passage; we’d fall into poverty ourselves otherwise.’
But Poole didn’t seem convinced. ‘Pilgrims? And what is it those pilgrims come to see on Base 478? Is it the shrine of the great messiah? Is it me? Have you dug up my bones? Do you have some gibbering manikin of me capering on a monument, begging for cash?’
Futurity tried to deny this: not literally. But there was truth in Poole’s charge, he thought uncomfortably. Of course Poole’s body had been lost when he fell into the wormhole to Timelike Infinity, and so he had been saved from the indignity of becoming a relic. But as the Wignerian religion had developed the Ecclesia had mounted several expeditions to Earth, and had returned with such treasures as the bones of Poole’s father Harry . . .
Poole seemed to know all this. He laughed at Futurity’s discomfiture.
The Captain called them. They had arrived at 3-Kilo, and Tahget, in his blunt, testing way, said his passengers might enjoy the view.
Poole was charmed by the clustering stars of 3-Kilo. To Futurity these spiral-arm stars, scattered and old, were a thin veil that barely distracted him from the horror of the underlying darkness beyond.
But it wasn’t stars they were here to see.
Poole pointed. ‘What in Lethe is that?’
An object shifted rapidly against the stars of 3-Kilo. Silhouetted, it was dark, its form complex and irregular.
Poole was fascinated. ‘An asteroid, maybe - no, too spiky for that. A comet nucleus, then? I spent some time in the Kuiper Belt, the ice moon belt at the fringe of Sol system. I was building starships out there. Big job, long story, and all vanished now, I imagine. But a lot of those Kuiper objects were like that: billions of years of sculptures of frost and ice, all piled up in the dark. Pointlessly beautiful. So is this a Kuiper object detached from some system or other? But it looks too small for that.’
Futurity was struck again by the liveliness of Poole’s mind, the openness of his curiosity - and this was only an incomplete Virtual. He wondered wistfully how it might have been to have met the real Michael Poole.
Then Poole saw it. ‘It’s a ship,’ he said. ‘A ship covered with spires and spines and buttresses and carvings, just like our own Ask Politely. A ship like a bit of a baroque cathedral. I think it’s approaching us! Or we’re approaching it.’
He was right, Futurity saw immediately. He felt obscurely excited. ‘And - oh! There’s another.’ He pointed. ‘And another.’
Suddenly there were ships all over the sky, cautiously converging. Every one of them was unique. Though it was hard to judge distances and sizes, Futurity could see that some were larger than the Ask Politely, some smaller; some were roughly cylindrical like the Politely, others were spheres, cubes, tetrahedrons, even toroids, and some had no discernible regularity at all. And all of them sported gaudy features every bit as spectacular as Politely’s. There were immense scoop mouths and gigantic flaring exhaust nozzles, spindly spines and fat booms, and articulating arms that worked delicately back and forth like insect legs. Some of the ships even sported streamlined wings and fins and smooth noses, though none of them looked as if they could survive an entry into an atmosphere. These glimmering sculptures drifted all around the sky.
Poole said, ‘Quite a carnival. Look at all that crap, the spines and spikes and nets and fins. It looks like it’s been stuck on by some giant kid making toy spaceships. I can’t believe there’s any utility in most of those features.’
Futurity said, ‘It’s also ugly. What a mess!’
‘Yes,’ said Poole. ‘But I have the feeling we’re not the ones this stuff is supposed to impress.’ He pointed. ‘And that one looks as if it wants to get a bit more intimate than the rest.’
A huge ship loomed from the crowd and approached the Ask Politely. It was a rough sphere, but its geometry was almost obscured by a fantastic hull-forest of metal, ceramics and polymers. Moving with an immense slow grace, it bore down on the Ask Politely, which waited passively.
At last the big sphere’s complex bulk shadowed most of the observation lounge’s blister. A jungle of nozzles and booms slid across the window. Futurity wondered vaguely how close it would come before it stopped.
And then he realised it wasn’t going to stop at all.
Captain Tahget murmured, ‘Brace for impact.’ Futurity grabbed a rail.
The collision of the two vast ships was slow, almost gentle. Futurity, cupped in the Ask Politely’s inertial-control field, barely felt it, but he could hear a groan of stressed metal, transmitted through the ship’s hull. Two tangles of superstructure scraped past each other; dishes were crashed and spines broken, before the ships came to rest, locked together.
Translucent access tubes sprouted from the hulls of both ships, and snaked across space like questing pseudopodia, looking for purchase. Futurity thought he saw someone, or something, scuttling through the tubes, but it was too far away to see clearly.
Poole gazed out with his mouth open. ‘Look - here’s another ship coming to join the party.’
So it was, Futurity saw. It was a relative dwarf compared to the monster that had first reached Ask Politely. But with more metallic grinding it snuggled close against the hulls of the two locked ships.
Poole laughed. ‘Boy, space travel has sure changed a lot since my day!’
Captain Tahget said, ‘Show’s over. We’ll be here two days, maybe three, before the swarming is done.’
Poole glanced at Futurity questioningly. The swarming?
Tahget said, ‘Until then we maintain our systems and wait. Let me remind you it’s the night watch; you passengers might want to get some sleep.’ He glanced at Poole. ‘Or whatever.’
Futurity returned to his cabin, and tried to sleep. But there were more encounters in the night, more subtle shudderings, more groans of stressed materials so deep they were almost subsonic.
This experience seemed to him to have nothing to do with spaceflight. I am in the belly of a fish, he thought, a huge fish of space that has come to this place of scattered stars to seek others of its kind. And it doesn’t even know I am here, embedded within it.
V
During the 3-Kilo lay-off Captain Tahget had his crew scour through the ship’s habitable areas, cleaning, refurbishing and repairing. It was make-work to keep the crew and passengers busy, but after a few hours Futurity conceded he welcomed the replacement of the ship’s accumulated pale stink o
f sweat, urine and adrenaline with antisepsis.
But the continuing refusal of Mara, reluctant terrorist, to come out of her cabin caused a crisis.
‘She has to leave her cabin, at least for a while,’ Tahget thundered. ‘That’s the company’s rules, not mine.’
‘Why?’ Poole asked evenly. ‘You recycle her air, provide her with water and food. Give her clean sheets and she’ll change her own bed, I’m sure.’
‘This is a starship, Michael Poole, an artificial environment. In a closed, small space like that cabin there can be build-ups of toxins, pathogens. And I remind you she is sharing her cabin with a monopole bomb, a nasty bit of crud at least two thousand years old, and Lethe knows what’s leaking out of that. We need to clean out her nest.’
Poole’s eyes narrowed. ‘What else?’
‘That woman needs exercise. You’ve seen the logs. She only gets off her bed to use the bathroom, and even that’s only a couple of times a day. What good will it do anybody if she keels over from a thrombosis even before we get to the Chandra? Especially if she’s got a dead man’s switch, as she claims.’
‘Those are all reasons for separating Mara from her bomb, despite your promises to the contrary. I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you, Captain. And if I don’t, how can Mara?’
Captain Tahget glared; he was a bulky, angry, determined man, and his scar was livid. ‘Michael Poole, my only concern is the safety of the ship, and everybody aboard - yes, including Mara. I am an honourable man, and if you have half the intuition for which your original was famous you will understand that. I give you my word that if she is willing to leave her room, briefly, for these essential purposes, Mara’s situation will not be changed. When she is returned, everything will be as it was. I hope that we can progress this in a civilised and mutually trusting fashion.’
Poole studied him for long seconds. Then he glanced at Futurity, and shrugged. ‘After all,’ Poole said, ‘she’ll still be able to detonate her bomb whether she’s in the cabin with it or not.’
So Mara emerged from her room, for the first time since before Futurity’s first visit to the ship.
A strange procession moved around the ship, with Tahget himself in the van, and a handful of crew, mostly female, surrounding the central core of Poole, Futurity and Mara. Mara insisted that Poole and Futurity stay with her at all times, one on either side, and she brought a pillow from her cabin which she held clutched to her chest, like a shield. Futurity couldn’t think of a thing to say to this woman who was holding them all hostage, but Poole kept up a comforting murmur of mellifluous small-talk.
Futurity saw that the crew checked over Mara surreptitiously. Maybe they were searching for the devices that linked her to her bomb. But there was nothing to be seen under her shapeless grey smock. Surely any such device would be an implant, he decided.
The peculiar tour finished in the observation lounge, where the view was still half obscured by the hull of an over-friendly ship that had sidled up to the Ask Politely. Further out, nuzzling ships drifted around the sky, like bunches of misshapen balloons.
Mara showed a flicker of curiosity for the first time since leaving her cabin. ‘The ships are so strange,’ she said.
‘That they are,’ Poole said.
‘What are they doing?’
‘I don’t know. And the Captain won’t tell me.’
She pointed. ‘Look. Those two are fighting.’
Futurity and the others crowded to the window to see. It was true. Two ships had come together in an obviously unfriendly way. Both lumbering kilometre-long beasts, they weren’t about to do anything quickly, but they barged against each other, withdrew, and then went through another slow-motion collision. As they spun and ground, bits of hull ornamentation were bent and snapped off, and the ships were surrounded by a pale cloud of fragments, detached spires and shields, nozzles and antennae and scoops.
‘It’s a peculiar sort of battle,’ Futurity said. ‘They aren’t using any weapons. All they are doing is smashing up each other’s superstructure.’
‘But maybe that’s the point,’ Poole said.
‘So strange,’ Mara said again.
Captain Tahget blocked her way. ‘But,’ he said, ‘not so strange as the fact that you, madam, were able to smuggle a monopole bomb onto my ship.’
The mood immediately changed. Mara, obviously frightened, shrank back against Poole, coming so close she brushed against him, making his flank sparkle with disrupted pixels.
Poole said warningly, ‘Captain, you promised you wouldn’t interfere with her.’
Tahget held up his big hands. ‘And I will keep my word. Nobody will touch the bomb, or Mara here, and we’ll go through with our flight to Chandra as we agreed.’
‘But,’ Poole said heavily, ‘you had an ulterior motive in getting her out here, despite your promises.’
‘All right,’ Captain Tahget snapped. ‘I need some answers. I must know how she got us all into this situation.’
Futurity asked, ‘Why?’
Tahget barely glanced at him. ‘To stop it happening again.’ He glared at Mara. ‘Who helped you? Somebody must have. You’re nothing but a refugee from Chandra; you came to 478 with nothing. Who helped you smuggle a bomb on board? Who equipped you with the means to use it? And why? I know what you want - I don’t understand, but I’ve heard what you said. What I don’t know is what your benefactors want. And I need to know.’
She returned his stare defiantly. ‘I want to go back to my cabin.’
But Tahget wouldn’t back down. The stand-off was tense, and Futurity, his heart pumping, couldn’t see a way out.
Poole intervened. ‘Mara, it may be best to tell him what he wants to know.’
‘But—’
‘Telling him who helped you will make no difference to you. You aren’t going to come this way again, are you? And I can see the other point of view. Captain Tahget is responsible for his ship.’ Mara hesitated, but Poole continued to reassure her. ‘I believe he’ll keep his word. Just tell him.’
She took a deep breath. ‘Her name is Ideator First Class Leen.’
Tahget growled, ‘Who?’
But Futurity was shocked. He knew the name: the person who had helped Mara set all this up was a priest belonging to the Guild of Virtual Idealism.
Poole’s jaw dropped when he heard this. ‘My own makers! How delicious.’
Mara began to explain how the Ideator had helped her smuggle the bomb and other equipment aboard, but Tahget waved her silent. ‘If that bunch of illusionists was involved, anything could have been done to us and we wouldn’t know it.’ His suspicious frown deepened. ‘And then, once you were aboard, you asked for Poole himself. So was that part of the scheme?’
‘No,’ she insisted. ‘The Ideator did tell me Michael Poole had been reincarnated on 478. But it was my idea to ask for him, not hers.’
Poole shook his head. ‘I’m not part of this, captain, believe me. I’m a mere creature of the Idealists - rather like Mara here, I suppose.’
Now the Captain’s ferocious stare was turned on Futurity. ‘And you,’ Tahget snarled, his scar livid. ‘What do you have to do with it? The truth, now.’
Futurity, flustered, protested, ‘Why, nothing, Captain. You know why I was brought in - to negotiate with Mara. You asked for the Ecclesia’s help! And I don’t understand why you’re even asking me such a question. I’m an Engineer, not an Idealist.’
Tahget snorted. ‘But you’re all alike, you Guilds. All of you clinging to your petty worldlets, with your stolen fragments of the soldier’s faith, your saintly relics and your shrines!’
Futurity was shocked. ‘Captain - believe me, Engineers and Idealists would never cooperate on a scheme like this. It’s unthinkable.’ He hunted for the right word. ‘We may seem alike to you. But we are rivals.’
‘Maybe that’s the point,’ Poole said smoothly. ‘Acolyte, I imagine the Idealists have their own flow-through of pilgrims, along with their money.’
‘Yes, that’s true.’
‘What, then, if Mara’s bomb goes off? What will be the impact on the Ecclesia’s trading?’
‘We don’t think of it as trading but a duty to helpless—’
‘Just answer the question,’ Tahget growled.
Futurity thought it through. ‘It would be a disaster for us,’ he conceded. ‘A refugee makes her journey only once in her lifetime. She brings her children. If she can choose, nobody would come to a place so unsafe as to allow something like this to happen.’
‘No more refugees with their meagre savings for you to cream,’ Poole said, watching Futurity’s reaction with a cold amusement. ‘No more pilgrims and their offerings. Your rivals would have struck a mighty economic blow, would they not?’
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