Analog SFF, June 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Everything continued to unfold according to plan.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 12

  K'Choi Gwu ka was old and tired and insane, and she knew it.

  She dug in the moist loam, the dirt that clung to her fur honest and comforting and somehow cleansing. The bright, yellow light overhead warmed her weary bones.

  Others labored all around her: weeding, hoeing, pruning, harvesting. A steady stream of crew-kindred moved about the vast chamber. Most walked, but some—the youngest, mainly—still swung from time to time from tree branches and ceiling rails. They stopped, or at least slowed, when they passed her, in subtle expressions of support or respect. Each acknowledgement made her feel worse.

  She dug in the moist loam, but her thoughts were in the stars.

  No two InterstellarNet species were alike. There were authoritarian societies, both dynastic and ruthlessly Darwinian. There were representative governments, with a dizzying array of selection methods. One far-off world was home to a scattering of continent-sized hive minds.

  A clot of mud and twigs had blocked a small irrigation channel. She gently lifted the obstruction, crumbled it, spread the sludge evenly on a bare patch of soil.

  Among the Unity, consensus ruled. But what if circumstances required action faster than a consensus process could accommodate? Consensus had been reached on that, too. At every level of Gwu's society—family, kindred, bond, and reliance—there was recognized a coordinator, the ka, who, when needed, decided for the group. The ka neither volunteered nor was overtly selected, but rather emerged. The ka was the member of the group most recognized for his or her or its wisdom, for having, in the normal group deliberations, most often arrived early at the decision eventually reached by the whole.

  Sweat matted the fur of her torso. Thirst tickled her throat. A vine redolent with ripe, fuzz-covered bluefruit was just within reach. She broke loose one of the globes and bit, letting tart juice trickle down her throat. Sudden waves traveled from the tips of Gwu's eight tentacles to her torso and reflected back: a self-mocking laugh. Which fruit to eat ... that was the type of decision that might safely have been entrusted to her.

  She was old and tired and insane. That insanity had brought them here. If there were to be any hope of redemption, any chance of saving her crew-kindred, any prospect of ever seeing home again, now was the time to nurture and embrace that insanity.

  * * * *

  The shakedown cruise had been a triumph.

  Part of that, K'Choi Gwu ka knew, was simple astronomical good fortune. The interstellar drive could not be operated safely deep within the gravity well of the Double Suns, but nature had provided. Some said the Double Suns was a misnomer, that they and the Red Companion formed a trinary system. Others asserted that precise observations of that red dwarf covered so brief a time period that its course was uncertain. It might distantly orbit the Double Suns; it might be moving too fast, passing in a brief celestial encounter. To Gwu, that discussion missed the point: The Red Companion was a mere fraction of a light-year away! A more convenient destination for the test flight could not have been imagined.

  But the Red Companion had no planets, hence no life and limited resources, hence was of little long-term interest. Beckoning from a scant few light-years away was the human solar system, its yellow sun a near-twin of Primary. Next closest, the K'vithians were half again more distant. The nearest neighbors thereafter were more than twice the distance to Earth. None considered a next step farther than that, with the prodigious investments in time and antimatter such trips would entail.

  For twenty years, the Unity sought consensus. Should the next voyage be to Earth or K'vith? Trade agents mined the infospheres at both candidate destinations, speculating how humans or K'vithians would respond to visitors. Or, respectful of the ongoing unease many within the Unity felt for their interstellar neighbors, it was also debated: should all further use of the technology be reconsidered?

  At times, Gwu despaired. These incompatible points of view were not new. She had politely debated the same issues when theory first hinted at the feasibility of an interstellar drive, and again when it seemed possible to generate enough antimatter to make such a drive practical. Both times, the ultimate outcome had been the same: Research had proceeded in secret, in theory invisible to other species’ InterstellarNet agents, while the Unity's own agents continued to explore distant data networks.

  And, as always—as data trickled in, as once novel perspectives became, if not compelling, at least familiar—points of concurrence emerged. The K'vithians showed no signs of an antimatter capability, unlike the humans who tried to hide one. Neither group exhibited significant progress towards an interstellar drive, nor of physical theory supportive of one. No recent attempts to undermine InterstellarNet came to light.

  So Gwu was unsurprised when, after many years, consensus was fully achieved. A voyage would be undertaken, as she had for so long advocated. The K'vithian solar system would be its destination. Harmony, the Unity's starship, would go unannounced. From the fringes of K'vithian space, the mission would consult with the Unity's trade agent before making contact. The ship would bring fuel for the return trip; it would not carry antimatter-production equipment that might prove too tempting.

  No, Gwu was not surprised that a course of action was finally decided. Its outlines, she thought, had long been evident.

  She was surprised, if only a little, to emerge as ka of the mission.

  * * * *

  Working the soil was calming, but it is not always a ka's fate to be calm. It was not these plants’ fate to remain healthy.

  Gwu returned from the serenity of the farm to the small cabin given her by the K'vithians. Showered and dried, she pressed the vidphone control. “We have problems,” she told the K'vithian junior officer who answered. Gwu felt little need for courtesy to her captors, nor had they interest in any non-utilitarian communication with their captives.

  A translator AI converted Firh Glithwah's short answering warble. “Explanation?"

  “Eco-malfunction. The farm, hydroponics, biorecycling—they all suffer increasingly from sulfur-dioxide contamination.” In such close proximity with K'vithians, contamination was unavoidable. Gwu trusted familiarity with the phenomenon would make the latest flare-up appear routine. All it took was carelessness in decontamination after maintenance trips into K'vithian-occupied parts of the ship.

  “Repairable?"

  That was mildly unexpected. Most crew would just order her to fix it. “Not this time. We need to flush and recharge parts of the system. We need new supplies."

  Gwu had never been told Harmony—in her thoughts, this ship would never be Victorious—had arrived, let alone its current location. But the laws of physics cannot be denied. The drive operated along the ship's major axis; coasting between the stars, the ship's simulated gravity depended upon spin around that same axis. There could be no disguising the preparatory times between, when there was no gravity, when chambers throughout the vast structure of the ship were turned in their gimbaled mountings to prepare for the coming acceleration. Given the years between, the capabilities of Harmony, and the arrangement of nearby stars, the result was clear. The ship could have arrived at one of but three possible destinations.

  Would those who had stolen Harmony return it with its crew captive, with no way to refuel, to the Double Suns? Inconceivable. What of the planetless red dwarf star at a similar distance from K'vith? There could be no hope of refueling there; such a trip would be only an epic exile. That left the human solar system.

  All Gwu cared about now was the opportunity to obtain supplies—and the chance, however remote, that the composition of the supplies ordered would itself send a message.

  Silence stretched. “Notification to the Foremost, with priority,” Firh Glithwah finally decided.

  The screen blanked midway through Gwu's still-reflexive, “Thank you."

  T'choi Swee qwo had entered the cabin during the conversation, stayi
ng discreetly out of the camera's field of vision. The visible camera's field of vision. “Is it bad?” he asked.

  They had never bonded with a child-bearer; one's absence, and the subsequent lack of children in their family, had made the two of them that much closer. And Swee was more than her husband; as qwo, he was also the ship's chief facilitator. On every level, she owed him honesty. That was impossible in their quarters, which were certainly bugged. “Walk with me?"

  They spoke of minutiae: assignments for upcoming work schedules, team standings in games whose sole purpose was to help while away the time, liaisons among the crew. She admired his quiet strength as they strode. The green of his fur was paling with age, the once bold contrast of his stripe pattern sadly faded. Lovingly, she lifted a tentacle to trace a lone, idiosyncratic lightning-bolt streak. She would miss it when it was gone.

  In the farm, in the quiet privacy of a secluded copse of trees, he asked again, “Is it bad?"

  Only there could be no certain privacy in a ship controlled by K'vithians, and her thoughts were too dangerous to share. “Time will tell."

  They both knew that meant she dare not talk about it.

  * * * *

  “Come."

  The K'vithian escorts in their dark goggles faced outward from the entrance to Gwu's quarters, scanning watchfully in all directions. Why, she had no idea. The deaths from the initial, failed attempt to recapture the ship still saddened and sickened her. There would be no further physical assault on their captors.

  She had brushed her fur carefully and straightened her utility belt. With a soft cloth she polished a smudge from her decorative buckle. Her escorts would not notice, nor, most likely, would Mashkith, but she would know she was at her best. “I am ready. Bring me to the Foremost."

  Logic made clear that humans in their billions teemed nearby. During that long ago, painstaking evaluation of possible destinations, she had pored over uploaded human and K'vithian records. Her knowledge was sadly out of date, but one remark of a pre-United Planets madman had never released its grip on her thoughts.

  One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.

  This Joseph Stalin was long dead, but had humanity changed? If the United Planets were to have antimatter and interstellar travel, would the Unity become the next statistic?

  She must not allow that to happen.

  * * * *

  Jupiter loomed on the holo wall of the Foremost's cabin. Small black disks, the shadows of several moons, crept across the cloud tops like a celestial timepiece. To what final resolution did it count?

  My leadership has brought us this far. It will overcome this problem, too.

  This wall display usually summarized ship's status. Mashkith could restore that information with a thought. Why favor the prisoners’ ka, their Foremost, with his own understanding of the data? A timid knock rattled his door. “Enter."

  K'Choi Gwu ka glided into the room, her fluid, many-limbed gait still a wonder after all these years. She towered over the Hunter crew who escorted her. “Thank you for seeing me.” Her voice was muffled by the mask that protected her from the sulfur compounds ubiquitous to the Hunter part of the ship.

  She did not react to the holo. Surely the Great Red Spot unambiguously identified the gas giant as Jupiter. She might have learned from careless crew where they were, or deduced it on her own. She might have thought the image was a recording or simulation, presented as disinformation. Or she might simply have enough self-control to give nothing away.

  Did she, too, tire of thinking always several steps ahead? Of the attempt to interpret every circumstance from every possible point of view? Mashkith felt a moment of unaccustomed kinship with her. To be Foremost is to be always on duty, ever lonely.

  “Chair.” It was an order, not a courtesy. He remained standing. To the guards, he added, “To your duties.” The hatch slid shut behind them. “Your request for a meeting, ka. Explanation."

  From pouches of her utility belt, Gwu removed several small plants sealed in clear bags. Damp-seeming dirt clung to their roots. Water beads sparkled on the leaves. Most of the leaves were green, although speckled with ragged, brown-edged holes. The remainder were mostly brown and sere. “The biosphere is going dormant. If this continues, we will die."

  One of the shadows now crossing Jupiter was cast by the human world of Callisto, where even now new provisions were being staged. “Resupply imminent. Not an issue."

  “Respectfully, Foremost, it is a big issue.” Ripples traveled from tips to base of her tentacles and reflected.

  Laughter? She dared to mock him?

  “Nervous laughter,” offered the AI translator by implant. “Fear."

  “Explanation,” Mashkith repeated.

  “Simply, there have been too many shocks to the biosphere. It's triggering a quiescent state. Nature's safety shutdown.” She shivered, and this gesture had no hint of humor to it. “Life's summer."

  Seasons were an astronomical phenomenon. At Mashkith's puzzled, silent inquiry, a many-times real time, not-to-scale graphic of the Unity's home system replaced the panorama of Jupiter. Planets spun and swooped about their suns. The third world of four orbiting the yellow sun blinked slowly, denoting the ancestral home its occupants called Chel Kra: Haven. More slowly, the suns, one yellow and one orange, traced elongated ellipses about their center of mass.

  Ah. Before the herds developed medical technology, few would have lived to see the orange companion star brighten more than once: life's summer. But however scenic the occurrence, its climactic effect was surely trivial. At its nearest approach, the orange interloper was about as distant from Primary as this system's ringed giant from its sun.

  “A brief, perhaps one percent increase in heating. Insignificant.” An internal query yielded a final fact: The binaries were, in real time, nearly at their most distant positions. Assume the biosphere of Victorious somehow mimicked, and was sensitive to, Haven's seasons. Would not the shipboard ecology be synched with the planetary ecology from which it sprang?

  “Foremosts never fools.” That wasn't universally true, of course. Mashkith's own grandfather, he whose brilliance-become-folly had ultimately sent Arblen Ems in hasty flight to the cometary rim, was an all-too-personal exception. The memory made him lonely and angry at the same time.

  Too much was ongoing in his current dealings with the humans to lose focus. Any ruse the ka might be attempting he could attend to later. The only important matter with the prisoners was that the repairs proceeded. “Guards."

  Then the herbivore did surprise him.

  “Foremost, respectfully, you do not understand.” Again the nervous laugh. “Your world has K'far."

  “Guards, at standby. Clarification?"

  And then Mashkith did understand. K'far and K'vith were tightly spin-coupled, more so even than Earth and its oversized moon. That coupling, by conservation of angular momentum, stabilized the axial inclinations of both worlds against perturbation.

  The peril of life's summer did not arise from a temporary blip in insolation. Without a large satellite of its own to anchor it, Haven was prone to dramatic shifts in axial tilt. Haven was virtually untilted, virtually without seasons—now. It had been thus for the entire brief period of civilized occupancy. But how often had the gravitational tug of the inrushing companion star caused severe and swift shifts in the axial tilt of Haven? Surely often enough for protective dormancy to be a survival characteristic.

  As would be the ability to quickly migrate long distances across the planet to anywhere still able to produce food. Mashkith imagined a starving herbivore herd retreating in disciplined order across a forest suddenly become snowy wasteland or searing desert, beset on all sides by packs of desperate carnivores. Was this why the ka's ancestors had come down from the trees? Sudden necessity?

  The Unity's caution and social cohesion finally made sense to him. So did their ability to stick with a program of research and a plan of action long enough to master even antimatter and
interstellar travel. Their home was that dangerous.

  But what was the relevance? “Relationship to ship's biosphere?"

  “Foremost, despite our best efforts, sulfur compounds continue to infiltrate the farming and hydroponics sections of the ship. Living in such proximity, it is unavoidable. More and more plants are reacting to the frequent stresses as though to the perils of a life's summer.” Nervous laugh. “They cannot do astronomy."

  When that which would become Victorious had emerged from the interstellar darkness, Arblen Ems had been teetering on the brink of extinction. The clan's scattered outposts had begun consolidating to a final few, had been driven to scavenging from abandoned stations—and raiding bases of other clans, where that could be safely and anonymously done—for parts and equipment whose resupply from the inner system was embargoed by the Great Clans.

  The clan's remaining ships now masqueraded as auxiliary vessels of the starship. A few Hunter aeroponics facilities had been installed into Victorious. The familiar plants provided a touch of home for the crew. More recently, an aeroponics facility had been used for show, for the humans. Those meager Hunter resources could not begin to sustain life across Victorious, even if the K'vithian biota did not exude sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide in quantities toxic to the prisoners whose knowledge of ship's systems remained so valuable.

  The herd's biosphere would need fixing, but, like everything else, for now that was secondary to the antimatter negotiations. “Your guidance, ka?” The response she gave him was tentative, but perhaps that was to be expected. She proposed experimentation with lighting, temperature, humidity, and trace-chemical levels. Nothing she suggested could hurt, and perhaps they would learn something useful.

  Faster than the guards could return to escort the ka to her quarters, Mashkith had delegated by implant to his tactical officer. Rashk Lothwer could oversee the prisoners’ reactivation of selected processing levels of the shipboard instrumentation to monitor those experiments.

  * * * *

  Gwu was old and tired and insane, and she knew it. To her list of attributes, she now added one that was not a complaint. She was relieved.