“Don’t patronize us with flattery,” Ajit said.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to do that. It’s true you’re both scientists, and it’s true you’ve both been certified rational enough for space travel.”
They couldn’t argue with that. I didn’t mention how often certification boards had misjudged, or been bribed, or just been too dazzled by well-earned reputations to look below the work to the worker. If Kane or Ajit knew all that, they kept it to themselves.
“I blame myself for any difficulties we’ve had here,” I said, in the best Nurturer fashion. Although it was also true. “It’s my job to keep a ship running in productive harmony, and this one, I think we can all agree, is not.”
No dissension. I saw that both of them dreaded some long, drawn-out discussion on group dynamics, never a topic that goes down well with astrophysicists. Kane said abruptly, “I still want to move the ship.”
I had prepared myself for this. “No, Kane. We’re not jumping closer in.”
He caught at my loophole. “Then can we jump to another location at the same distance from the core? Maybe measurements from another base point would help.”
“We’re not jumping anywhere until I’m sure the third minicap isn’t coming.”
“How long will that be?” I could see the formidable intelligence under the childish tantrums already racing ahead, planning measurements, weighing options.
“We’ll give it another three days.”
“All right.” Suddenly he smiled, his first in days. “Thanks, Tirzah.”
I turned to Ajit. “Ajit, what can we do for your work? What do you need?”
“I ask for nothing,” he said, with such a strange, intense, unreadable expression that for a moment I felt irrational fear. Then he stood and went into his bunk. I heard the door lock.
I had failed again.
No alarm went off in the middle of the night. There was nothing overt to wake me. But I woke anyway, and I heard someone moving quietly around the wardroom. The muscles of my right arm tensed to open my bunk, and I forced them to still.
Something wasn’t right. Intuition, that mysterious shadow of rational thought, told me to lie motionless. To not open my bunk, to not even reach out and access the ship’s data on my bunk screen. To not move at all.
Why?
I didn’t know.
The smell of coffee wafted from the wardroom. So one of the men couldn’t sleep, made some coffee, turned on his terminal. So what?
Don’t move, said that pre-reasoning part of my mind, from the shadows.
The coffee smell grew stronger. A chair scraped. Ordinary, mundane sounds.
Don’t move.
I didn’t have to move. This afternoon I had omitted to mention to Kane and Ajit those times that certification boards had misjudged, or been bribed, or just been too dazzled by well-earned reputations to look below the work to the worker. Those times in which the cramped conditions of space, coupled with swollen egos and frenzied work, had led to disaster for a mission Nurturer. But we had learned. My bunk had equipment the scientists did not know about.
Carefully I slid my gaze to a spot directly above me on the bunk ceiling. Only my eyes moved. I pattern-blinked: two quick, three beats closed, two quick, a long steady stare. The screen brightened.
This was duplicate ship data. Not a backup; it was entirely separate, made simultaneously from the same sensors as the main log but routed into separate, freestanding storage that could not be reached from the main computer. Scientists are all sophisticated users. There is no way to keep data from any who wish to alter it except by discreet, unknown, untraceable storage. I pattern-blinked, not moving so much as a finger or a toe in the bed, to activate various screens of ship data.
It was easy to find.
Yesterday, at 1850 hours, the minicap bay had opened and received a minicap. Signal had failed to transmit to the main computer. Today at 300 hours, which was fifteen minutes ago, the minicap bay had been opened manually and the payload removed. Again signal had failed to the main computer.
The infrared signature in the wardroom, seated at his terminal, was Ajit.
It was possible the signal failures were coincidental, and Ajit was even now transferring data from the third minicap into the computer, enjoying a cup of hot coffee while he did so, gloating in getting a perfectly legitimate jump on Kane. But I didn’t think so.
What did I think?
I didn’t have to think; I just knew. I could see it unfolding, clear as a holovid. All of it. Ajit had stolen the second minicap, too. That had been the morning after Kane and I had slept so soundly, the morning after Ajit had given us wine to celebrate Kane’s shadow-matter theory. What had been in that wine? We’d slept soundly, and Ajit told us that the minicap had come before we were awake. Ajit said he’d already put it into the computer. It carried Kane’s upload’s apology that the prelim data, the data from which Kane had constructed his shadow-matter thesis, was wrong, contaminated by a radiation strike.
Ajit had fabricated that apology and that replacement data. The actual second minicap would justify Kane’s work, not undo it. Ajit was saving all three minicaps to use for himself, to claim the shadow matter discovery for his own. He’d used the second minicap to discredit the first; he would claim the third had never arrived, had never been sent from the dying probe.
The real Kane, my Kane, hadn’t found the particle from the first ship’s breach because it had, indeed, been made of shadow matter. That, and not slow speed, had been why the particle showed no radiation. The particle had exerted gravity on our world, but nothing else. The second breach, too, had been shadow matter. I knew that as surely as if Kane had shown me the pages of equations to prove it.
I knew something else, too. If I went into the shower and searched my body very carefully, every inch of it, I would find in some inconspicuous place the small, regular hole into which a subdermal tracker had gone the night of the drugged wine. So would Kane. Trackers would apprise Ajit of every move we made, not only large-muscle moves like a step or a hug, but small ones like accessing my bunk display of ship’s data. That was what my intuition had been warning me of. Ajit did not want to be discovered during his minicap thefts.
I had the same trackers in my own repertoire. Only I had not thought this mission deteriorated enough to need them. I had not wanted to think that. I’d been wrong.
But how would Ajit make use of Kane’s stolen work with Kane there to claim it for himself?
I already knew the answer, of course. I had known it from the moment I pattern-blinked at the ceiling, which was the moment I finally admitted to myself how monstrous this mission had turned.
I pushed open the bunk door and called cheerfully, “Hello? Do I smell coffee? Who’s out there?”
“I am,” Ajit said genially. “I cannot sleep. Come have some coffee.”
“Coming, Ajit.”
I put on my robe, tied it at my waist, and slipped the gun from its secret mattress compartment into my palm.
14. PROBE
The probe jumped successfully. We survived.
This close to the core, the view wasn’t as spectacular as it was farther out. Sag A*, which captured us in orbit immediately, now appeared as a fuzzy region dominating starboard. The fuzziness, Ajit said, was a combination of Hawking radiation and superheated gases being swallowed by the black hole. To port, the intense blue cluster of IRS16 was muffled by the clouds of ionized plasma around the probe. We experienced some tidal forces, but the probe was so small that the gravitational tides didn’t yet cause much damage.
Ajit has found a way to successfully apply Kane’s shadow-matter theory to the paths of the infalling gases, as well as to the orbits of the young stars near Sag A*. He says there may well be a really lot of shadow matter near the core, and maybe even farther out. It may even provide enough mass to “balance” the universe, keeping it from either flying apart forever or collapsing in on itself. Shadow matter, left over from the very beg
inning of creation, may preserve creation.
Kane nods happily as Ajit explains. Kane holds my hand. I stroke his palm gently with my thumb, making circles like tiny orbits.
15. SHIP
Ajit sat, fully dressed and with steaming coffee at his side, in front of his terminal. I didn’t give him time to get the best of me. I walked into the wardroom and fired.
The sedative dart dropped him almost instantly. It was effective, for his body weight, for an hour. Kane didn’t hear the thud as Ajit fell off his chair and onto the deck; Kane’s bunk door stayed closed. I went into Ajit’s bunk and searched every cubic meter of it, overriding the lock on his personal storage space. Most of that was taken up with the bronze statue of Shiva. The minicaps were not there, nor anywhere else in his bunk.
I tried the galley next, and came up empty.
Same for the shower, the gym, the supply closets.
Ajit could have hidden the cubes in the engine compartments or the fuel bays or any of a dozen other ship’s compartments, but they weren’t pressurized and he would have had to either suit up or pressurize them. Either one would have shown up in my private ship data, and they hadn’t. Ajit probably hadn’t wanted to take the risk of too much covert motion around the ship. He’d only had enough drugs to put Kane and me out once. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have risked subdermal trackers.
I guessed he’d hidden the cubes in the observatory.
Looking there involved digging. By the time I’d finished, the exotics lay yanked up in dying heaps around the room. The stones of the fountain had been flung about. I was filthy and sweating, my robe smeared with soil. But I’d found them, the two crystal cubes from the second and third minicaps, removed from their heavy shielding. Their smooth surfaces shed the dirt easily.
Forty-five minutes had passed.
I went downstairs to wake Kane. The expedition would have to jump immediately; there is no room on a three-man ship to confine a prisoner for long. Even if I could protect Kane and me from Ajit, I didn’t think I could protect Ajit from Kane. These minicaps held the validation of Kane’s shadow-matter work, and in another man, joy over that would have eclipsed the theft. I didn’t think it would be that way with Kane.
Ajit still lay where I’d dropped him. The tranquilizer is reliable. I shot Ajit with a second dose and went into Kane’s bunk. He wasn’t there.
I stood too still for too long, then frantically scrambled into my s-suit. I had already searched everywhere in the pressurized sections of the ship. Oh, let him be taking a second, fruitless look at the starboard hold, hoping to find some trace of the first particle that had hit us! Let him be in the damaged backup engine compartment, afire with some stupid, brilliant idea to save the engine! Let him be—
“Kane! Kane!”
He lay in the starboard hold, on his side, his suit breached. He lay below a jagged piece of plastic from a half-open supply box. Ajit had made it look as if Kane had tried to open a box marked SENSOR REPLACEMENTS, had torn his suit, and the suit sealer nanos had failed. It was an altogether clumsy attempt, but one that, in the absence of any other evidence and a heretofore spotless reputation, would probably have worked.
The thing inside the suit was not Kane. Not anymore.
I knelt beside him. I put my arms around him and begged, cried, pleaded with him to come back. I pounded my gloves on the deck until I, too, risked suit breach. I think, in that abandoned and monstrous moment, I would not have cared.
Then I went into the wardroom, exchanged my tranquilizer gun for a knife, and slit Ajit’s throat. I only regretted that he wasn’t awake when I did it, and I only regretted that much, much later.
I prepared the ship for the long jump back to the Orion Arm. After the jump would come the acceleration-deceleration to Skillian, the closest settled world, which will take about a month standard. Space physics which I don’t understand make this necessary; a ship cannot jump too close to a large body of matter like a planet. Shadow matter, apparently, does not count.
Both Ajit and Kane’s bodies rest in the cold of the nonpressurized port hold. Kane’s initial work on shadow matter rests in my bunk. Every night I fondle the two cubes which will make him famous—more famous—on the settled Worlds. Every day I look at the data, the equations, the rest of his work on his terminal. I don’t understand it, but sometimes I think I can see Kane, his essential self, in these intelligent symbols, these unlockings of the secrets of cosmic energy.
It was our shadow selves, not our essential ones, that destroyed my mission, the shadows in the core of each human being. Ajit’s ambition and rivalry. Kane’s stunted vision of other people and their limits. My pride, which led me to think I was in control of murderous rage long after it had reached a point of no return. In all of us.
I left one thing behind at the center of the galaxy. Just before the Kepler jumped, I jettisoned Ajit’s statue of a Shiva dancing, in the direction of Sag A*. I don’t know for sure, but I imagine it will travel toward the black hole at the galaxy’s core, be caught eventually by its gravity, and spiral in, to someday disappear over the event horizon into some unimaginable singularity. That’s what I want to happen to the statue. I hate it.
As to what will happen to me, I don’t have the energy to hate it. I’ll tell the authorities everything. My license as a Nurturer will surely be revoked, but I won’t stand trial for the murder of Ajit. A captain is supreme law on her ship. I had the legal authority to kill Ajit. However, it’s unlikely that any scientific expedition will hire me as captain ever again. My useful life is over, and any piece of it left is no more than one of the ashy, burned-out stars Kane says orbit Sag A*, uselessly circling the core until its final death, giving no light.
A shadow.
16. PROBE
We remain near the galactic core, Kane and Ajit and I. The event horizon of Sag A* is about one-fiftieth of a light-year below us. As we spiral closer, our speed is increasing dramatically. The point of no return is one-twentieth of a light-year. The lethal radiation, oddly enough, is less here than when we were drifting near the shadow matter on the other side of Sag A West, but it is enough.
I think at least part of my brain has been affected, along with the repair program to fix it. It’s hard to be sure, but I can’t seem to remember much before we came aboard the probe, or details of why we’re here. Sometimes I almost remember, but then it slips away. I know that Kane and Ajit and I are shadows of something, but I don’t remember what.
Ajit and Kane work on their science. I have forgotten what it’s about, but I like to sit and watch them together. Ajit works on ideas and Kane assists in minor ways, as once Kane worked on ideas and Ajit assisted in minor ways. We all know the science will go down into Sag A* with us. The scientists do it anyway, for no other gain than pure love of the work. This is, in fact, the purest science in the universe.
Our mission is a success. Ajit and Kane have answers. I have kept them working harmoniously, have satisfied all their needs while they did it, and have captained my ship safely into the very heart of the galaxy. I am content.
Not that there aren’t difficulties, of course. It’s disconcerting to go up on the observation deck. Most of the exotics remain, blooming in wild profusion, but a good chunk of the hull has disappeared. The effect is that anything up there—flowers, bench, people—is drifting through naked space, held together only by the gravity we exert on each other. I don’t understand how we can breathe up there; surely the air is gone. There are a lot of things I don’t understand now, but I accept them.
The wardroom is mostly intact, except that you have to stoop to go through the door to the galley, which is only about two feet tall, and Ajit’s bunk has disappeared. We manage fine with two bunks, since I sleep every night with Ajit or Kane. The terminals are intact. One of them won’t display anymore, though. Ajit has used it to hold a holo he programmed on a functioning part of the computer and superimposed over where the defunct display stood. The holo is a rendition of a image he showed me on
ce before, of an Indian god, Shiva.
Shiva is dancing. He dances, four-armed and graceful, in a circle decorated with flames. Everything about him is dynamic, waving arms and kicking uplifted leg and mobile expression. Even the flames in the circle dance. Only Shiva’s face is calm, detached, serene. Kane, especially, will watch the holo for hours.
The god, Ajit tells us, represents the flow of cosmic energy in the universe. Shiva creates, destroys, creates again. All matter and all energy participate in this rhythmic dance, patterns made and unmade throughout all of time.
Shadow matter — that’s what Kane and Ajit are working on. I remember now. Something decoupled from the rest of the universe right after its creation. But shadow matter, too, is part of the dance. It exerted gravitational pull on our ship. We cannot see it, but it is there, changing the orbits of stars, the trajectories of lives, in the great shadow play of Shiva’s dancing.
I don’t think Kane, Ajit, and I have very much longer. But it doesn’t matter, not really. We have each attained what we came for, and since we, too, are part of the cosmic pattern, we cannot really be lost. When the probe goes down into the black hole at the core, if we last that long, it will be as a part of the inevitable, endless, glorious flow of cosmic energy, the divine dance.
I am ready.
The people of sand and slag
PAOLO BACIGALUPI
Here’s a visit to a grim future about which the good news is, humans have survived. The bad news is, not much else has …
New writer Paolo Bacigalupi made his first sale in 1998, to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, took a break from the genre for several years, and has returned to it in the new century, with new sales to F&SF and Asimov’s. He had a story in our Twenty-first Annual Collection. Bacigalupi lives with his family in western Colorado, where he works for an environmental newspaper.
The Year's Best SF 22 # 2004 Page 20
