The Year's Best SF 22 # 2004

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  The brothers contemplated this. “I don’t suppose we should tell our father.”

  “What would we tell him? We’ve got dozens of inspectors on Chee anyway—what can he do that they can’t?”

  Martinez gave a little shrug. “Not get bribed?” he said.

  “Father’s supposed to open the meeting of the Petitioners’ Council in something like fifteen days.” Roland gave a tight little smile. “If he abandons his task and goes charging off to Chee on the Ensenada to expose the wicked, that’s all the warning Allodorm or anyone else is going to need. Everything would be tidied up by the time he gets there.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m not going anywhere until Cassilda has our baby, after which the whole family will leave for Zanshaa so that I can sit in Convocation.”

  Martinez sighed. “I’m the Lord Inspector, aren’t I? I suppose it’s up to me to inspect.”

  Severin thought again about the two brothers. They knew each other well, they worked together deftly, they had a shared history and vocabulary. It occurred to Severin, however, that perhaps they didn’t like each other.

  “Lady Liao,” Roland said suddenly.

  Martinez looked at him. “Beg pardon?”

  Roland turned to Severin. “Lady Liao, wife of Lord Judge Omohundro. She’s perfect for you. Her husband’s on the ring tied up in a long series of hearings, and I’m sure she’s looking for amusement.”

  Severin could do nothing but stare. Can you do that? he wanted to ask.

  Roland looked at him. “Shall I invite her to tea?” he said.

  “We are holding at five minutes,” said Lord Go Shikimori, captain of the Surveyor.

  “Holding at five minutes, my lord,” said Severin.

  Surveyor awaited final permission from Ring Control to launch on its mission through Chee and Parkhurst to the possible wormholes beyond. Encircled by the round metal hoops of his acceleration cage, Severin glanced down at the pilot’s board before him—it was he who would steer Surveyor from the ring and into the great emptiness beyond, not that the job was particularly difficult.

  The lights of the pilot’s board glittered on the ring Severin wore on the middle finger of his right hand. Nine small sapphires sparkled around a central opal. The ring had been a parting gift from Lady Liao, one sapphire for each night she and Severin had spent together.

  For a moment he was lost in reverie, memories of smooth cool sheets, silken flesh, Lady Liao’s subtle scent. Wind chimes that saluted the dawn on the balcony outside her room.

  Lord Roland Martinez, he thought, was very, very smart.

  “Message from Ring Control, my lord,” reported Lord Barry Montcrief, who sat at the comm board—he had the drawling High City accent that Lord Go preferred as the official voice of his ship. “Permission granted to depart the station en route to Chee system.”

  “Resume countdown,” the captain said.

  “Countdown resumed,” said Warrant Officer Lily Bhagwati, who sat at the engines station.

  “Depressurize boarding tube. Warn crew for zero gravity.”

  “Depressurizing boarding tube.” Alarms clattered through the ship. “Zero gravity alarm, my lord.”

  Severin checked his board, took the joysticks in his hands, rotated them. “Maneuvering thrusters gimbaled,” he said. “Pressure at thruster heads nominal.”

  “Boarding tube depressurized.”

  “Withdraw boarding tube,” said the captain.

  “Boarding tube …” Waiting for the light to go on. “ … withdrawn, my lord.”

  “Electrical connections withdrawn,” said Bhagwati. “Outside connectors sealed. Ship is on 100 percent internal power.”

  “Data connectors withdrawn,” said Lord Barry. “Outside data ports sealed.”

  “Main engines gimbaled,” said Bhagwati. “Gimbal test successful.”

  “Hold at ten seconds,” said the captain. “Status, everyone.”

  All stations reported clean boards.

  “Launch in ten,” Lord Go said. “Pilot, the ship is yours.”

  “The ship is mine, my lord.” Severin released and clenched his hands on the joysticks.

  The digit counter in the corner of his display counted down to zero. Lights flashed.

  “Clamps withdrawn,” he said. “Magnetic grapples released.”

  Severin suddenly floated free in his webbing as Surveyor was cast free of Laredo’s accelerator ring. Surveyor had been moored nose-in, and the release of centripetal force from the upper ring, which was spinning at seven times the rate of the planet below, gave the ship a good rate of speed that carried it clear of any potential obstacles.

  Severin checked the navigation display anyway, and saw no threats. He thumbed buttons on his joysticks and engaged the maneuvering thrusters. An increase in gravity snugged him against his chest harness. He fired the thrusters several more times to increase the rate at which Surveyor was withdrawing from the ring.

  It was very illegal to fire Surveyor’s main antimatter engines, with their radioactive plumes, anywhere near the inhabited ring. Severin needed to push the ship past the safety zone before Surveyor could really begin its journey.

  Again Severin checked the navigation displays. He could see the Chee Company yacht Kayenta outbound for Wormhole Station Two, carrying Martinez and Lady Terza to the newly opened planet. Surveyor would follow in their wake, fourteen days behind. A chain of cargo vessels were inbound from Station One, many of them carrying equipment or settlers for Chee, all of them standing on huge pillars of fire as they decelerated to their rendezvous with the ring. The closest was still seven hours away.

  The only obstacle of note was the giant bulk of the Titan, which orbited Laredo at a considerable distance for reasons of safety. Titan was full of antimatter destined for Chee and Parkhurst, and even though the antimatter was remarkably stable—flakes of antihydrogen suspended by static electricity inside incredibly tiny etched silicon shells, all so tiny they flowed like a thick fluid—nevertheless if things went wrong the explosion would vaporize a chunk of Laredo’s ring and bring the rest down on the planet below.

  It would be a good thing for Surveyor to stay well clear of Titan.

  Severin looked at the point of light on the display that represented Titan and wondered about the conversation he’d had with Martinez and his brother, the one where Allodorm’s name had first been raised. Titan was a Meridian Company ship leased long-term by the Exploration Service. The growing settlements on Chee required antimatter to generate power, and as yet had no accelerator ring. Chee Station, with its skyhook that ran cargo to the surface, required power as well.

  The wormhole stations at both Chee and Parkhurst, with their colossal mass drivers that kept the wormholes stable, required an enormous output of power.

  Since Chee could not as yet generate its own antimatter, it had been decided to ramp up antihydrogen production on Laredo’s ring, fill Titan with the results, and move the whole ship to a distant parking orbit around the newly settled planet, on the far side of Chee’s largest moon so that even if the unthinkable happened and Titan blew, none of the energetic neutrons and furious gamma rays would reach Chee’s population. When one of Chee’s installations needed antihydrogen, they’d send a shuttle to Titan and collect some. By the time Titan had been depleted, an accelerator ring—a small one, not the vast technological wonder that circled all of Laredo — would have been built in Chee orbit.

  Severin wondered if it truly made economic sense to use Titan that way, or whether it was a complex scheme to fill Allodorm’s coffers.

  Surveyor finally reached the limit of Laredo’s safety zone, and Severin rotated the ship onto a new heading, his couch sliding lightly within the rings of his acceleration cage.

  “We are on our new heading, my lord,” Severin said. “Two-two-zero by zero-zero-one absolute. Mission plan is in the guidance computer.”

  “I am in command,” Lord Go called.

  “The lord captain is in command,
” Severin agreed. He took his hands off the joysticks.

  “Engines, fire engines,” the captain said. “Accelerate at two point three gravities.”

  Severin felt a kick to his spine and his acceleration couch swung within its cage as the gravities began piling on his chest.

  “Accelerating at two point three gravities,” Bhagwati said. “Course two-two-zero by zero-zero-one absolute.”

  They would accelerate hard until they’d achieved escape velocity from Laredo, then slacken for most of the journey to a single gravity, going to harder accelerations for an hour out of each watch.

  Severin looked at the displays and saw Kayenta again, outbound and approaching the wormhole that would take it to Chee. It was a pity that Surveyor wouldn’t travel to Chee, but merely pass through the system on its way to Parkhurst and the possible new wormholes. A pity not only because Severin wouldn’t see Martinez and Terza again, but because he’d probably never find out how the Allodorm thing worked out.

  He’d just have to find something else to amuse him for the next few months, and he thought he knew what it was.

  He’d been unable to entirely forget the dream he’d had at Rio Hondo, and he’d loaded his personal data foil with articles on puppets, puppeteers, marionettes, automata, shadow puppets, and recordings of performances.

  People on long voyages found many ways to occupy their hours. Some gambled, some drank, some drew into themselves. Some concentrated obsessively on their work. Some watched recorded entertainments, some had affairs with other crew members, some played musical instruments. Some worked as hard as they could at making everyone else on the ship miserable.

  Perhaps, Severin thought, he would be the first to plan a puppet theater.

  Certainly it was a field that seemed to have a lot of room to expand.

  “Are you all on virtual?” asked the astronomer Shon-dan. “I’m transmitting the outside cameras on Channel Seventeen.”

  “Comm: Channel Seventeen.” Terza’s soft voice came to Martinez’s ears from the nearest acceleration couch.

  Martinez was already on the correct channel, his head filled with the stars as viewed from the Kayenta as it passed the final moments of its twenty-day acceleration out of the Laredo system. The virtual cap he wore to project the image onto his visual centers was lighter than the Fleet issue, which required earphones and microphone pickups, and he sensed other differences as well: the depth of field was subtly different, a bit flatter, perhaps because the civilian rig required less precision.

  The stars were thrown like a great wash of diamonds across the midnight backdrop, silent and steady and grand. They were the home stars under which Martinez had spent the first half of his life, and his mind naturally sought the familiar, comforting constellations in their well-known places. Laredo’s own star, this far out, was hardly brighter than other bright stars. The software had been instructed to blot out Kayenta’s brilliant tail so as to avoid losing the stars by contrast, and the result was a flickering, disturbing negative blot occupying one part of the display, a void of absolute darkness that seemed to pursue the ship.

  Martinez and Terza were in Kayenta’s main lounge, the softly scented center of the yacht’s social life, and were now twenty days out from Laredo. Shon-dan, an astronomer from the Imperial University of Zarafan who had come aboard as Marcella’s guest, was about to show the reason why an astronomical observatory had been placed on Chee Station, and why she had spent months journeying here.

  “Ten seconds,” Shon-dan said. “Eight. Five.”

  Kayenta was traveling too fast for Martinez to see the wormhole station as the ship flashed past, or the wormhole itself, the inverted-bowl-of-stars that was their destination. The transition itself was instantaneous, and the star field changed at the same instant.

  A vast, lush globe of stars suddenly blazed across Martinez’s perceptions, occupying at least a third of the sky, the stars so packed together they seemed nearly as dense as glittering grains of sand stretched along an ocean shore. Martinez felt himself take an involuntary breath, and he heard Terza’s gasp. The closer Martinez looked, the more stars he saw. There seemed to be vague clouds and structures within the globe, each made up of more and more brilliants, but Martinez couldn’t tell whether the clouds actually existed or were the results of his own mind trying to create order in this vast, burning randomness, seeking the familiar just as it had sought out constellations in Laredo’s sky.

  Gazing into the vast star-globe was like drifting deeper and deeper into a endless sea, past complex, ill-defined shoals that on closer inspection were made up of millions of coral structures, while the structures themselves, looked at with greater care, were found to be composed of tiny limestone shells, and the shells themselves, on examination, each held tiny specks of life, a kind of infinite regression that baffled the senses.

  “Now you see why we’ve built the observatory.” Shon-dan’s voice, floating into Martinez’ perceptions, was quietly triumphant. “Of all the wormholes in the empire, this one leads to a system that’s closest to the center of a galaxy. This is our best chance to observe how a galactic core is structured. From here we can directly observe the effects on nearby stars of the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center.”

  With an effort of will Martinez shifted his attention away from the glowing globe to the rest of the starry envelope that surrounded Kayenta. By comparison with Laredo the entire sky was packed with stars, with an opalescent strip that marked the galaxy’s disk spiraling out into endless space. The Chee system was actually within the galactic core, though on its periphery, and stars on all sides were near and burning bright. Chee’s own star, Cheemah, shone with a warm yellow light, but other nearby stars equaled its fire.

  “The stars here are very dense,” Shon-dan said, “though not as dense as they are farther in. The Chee system has seven stars—or maybe eight, we’re not sure — and the orbits are very complex.”

  “Do we actually know which galaxy we’re in?” Terza asked.

  “No. We’re scanning for Cepheids and other yardsticks that might give us an indication, but so far we haven’t found enough to make certain of anything. We could be anywhere in the universe, of course, and anywhere within a billion years of where we started.”

  Martinez heard footfalls enter the room, then the voice of Lord Pa. “Looking at the stars?” he said. “You’ll get tired of them soon enough. Between the galactic core and the other six stars in Chee’s system, there’s no true night on the planet, and we’ve had to install polarizing windows on all our workers’ dormitories just so our people can get some rest. I’ve just stopped looking at the sky — galactic centers are nasty violent places, and the less we have to do with them, the better.”

  “Stars are packed pretty closely here, true enough, my lord.” Shon-dan’s deference to a wealthy Peer did not quite disguise her disagreement. Clearly she was not about to tire of gazing at this sky anytime soon.

  “I’m going to sit and play a game of cinhal,” Lord Pa said. “Don’t let me disturb you.”

  Martinez returned his attention to the great, glowing galactic core while he heard Lord Pa shuffle to a table, then give it the muted commands to set up a game.

  “So far you’re only seeing the light in its visible spectrum,” Shon-dan said. “I’m going to add some other spectra in a moment. There will be some false colors. I’ll try to fix those later.” Martinez heard the Lai-own give a few muted commands, and then the galactic core shifted from a pearly color to a muted amber, and the great sphere was suddenly pierced through by an enormous lance of light, shimmering and alive, a giant pillar that seemed to stretched from the foundations of the universe to its uttermost heaven.

  Martinez gave an involuntary cry, and he heard Terza’s echo.

  “Yes.” Triumph had again entered Shon-dan’s voice. “That’s the beam of relativistic particles generated by the galaxy’s supermassive black hole. If you look closely, you’ll see it has fine structure — we d
idn’t expect that, and we’re working on theories of the phenomenon, but so far we don’t have an explanation.”

  In his virtual display Martinez coasted closer to the great burning pillar of energy, and he saw the pillar pulse with light, saw strands of opalescent color weave and shift as they were caught in some vast incomprehensible flow of power, a hypnotic dance of colossal force.

  For the next hour Shon-dan showed Martinez and Terza features within the galactic core, including the four giant stars now in a swift death spiral around the central black hole. “The black hole is feeding now,” he said. “Sometimes the supermassive black holes are actively involved in devouring neighboring stars and sometimes they aren’t. We don’t know why or how they shift from one state to another.”

  “Nasty, as I said,” said Lord Pa. “I have to say that I prefer nature a good deal less chaotic and destructive. I like games with rules. I like comfortable chairs, compound interest, and a guaranteed annual profit. I prefer not to think of some cosmic accident about to jump out of hiding and suck all my comforts right out of the universe.”

  “We’re perfectly safe from the black hole, my lord,” Shon-dan said. “We’re nowhere near the danger zone.”

  Martinez quietly turned off the virtual display to take a look at Lord Pa. He sat in a Lai-own chair that cradled his breastbone, and was bent over the room’s game board. The light from the display shone up on his face, on the short muzzle and deep red eyes.

  Behind Pa the yellow chesz wood panels, inset with red enjo in abstract designs, glowed in the recessed lights of the lounge. A heavy crystal goblet sat near one hand, filled with Lai-own protein broth.

  Comforts, Martinez thought. Guaranteed profit. Right.

  “Perhaps we should break for now,” Shon-dan said. He had noticed Martinez leaving the virtual display.