Timelike Infinity

by Stephen Baxter

  He forced his head up and looked blearily to the closing port. He saw a splinter of salmon-pink Jupiter, a wedge of stars; already they were out of the toy atmosphere of the earth-world, above its scrap of blue sky, and their air was rushing into Jovian space.

  Blackness welled up within him. The pain in his legs stabbed through his dimming senses.

  The girl moaned, sounding very far away, and he thought he heard Harry's voice. His lungs were empty. He was very cold. He closed his eyes.

  * * *

  Berg turned a half somersault before the thin air slowed her tumble. Then she was falling, upside down relative to the earth-craft, gravity tugging at her so feebly it seemed as if she were hanging in the sky.

  Sucking at the cold air, her arms and legs spread wide, she stared back at the earth-craft. The biggest danger with all of this — the biggest in a whole zoo of dangers, she conceded — was that she might have run herself up to escape velocity. Would she continue to fly out into the Jovian light, her lungs straining to find the last few molecules of oxygen? She tried to taste the air, to sense if it were getting any thinner, but it was impossible to tell.

  The earth-craft was laid out like a toy before her. She was suspended upside down below the craft, so that she was looking down at the flat, quarter-mile-wide dome of dove-gray Xeelee material that formed its base. The dome was breached by circular vents, each about a yard wide, which must be the mouths of the singularity cannon Poole had described. The dome reminded her incongruously of some old sports stadium, ripped from the Earth and hurled into orbit around Jupiter; but from the base of this stadium dangled a cluster of Xeelee-material buildings and the battered, ancient stones of a henge. Close to the edge of the inverted landscape she could make out her two pursuers; staring after her, they clung to their ceiling of grass like two pink-clad flies, their weapons pinned to the sward by the inverted gravity.

  Beyond the earth-craft the Spline warship climbed across the sky, Jupiter casting long, mottled highlights onto its elephant hide. The Spline was like a bad dream surfacing into consciousness, Miriam thought.

  Now there was the faintest whisper of a breeze past her ears as the earth-craft's weak, complex gravity field stroked her back into the artificial sky. She felt a surge of relief. Well, at least she wasn't to die of asphyxiation, suspended carelessly over Jupiter.

  The earth-craft seemed to be tipping toward her, dipping its domed section and hiding the grass-coated face from her view. Soon, even the Spline ship was hidden by its bulk.

  For an odd, brief moment she was alone. She was suspended in a bubble of crisp blue sky; tufts of ragged white cloud laced the air, draping themselves over the ragged edge of the earth-craft. It was utterly silent. It was almost peaceful. She didn't feel any fear, or regrets; she was on a roller coaster of events now, and there wasn't much she could do except relax, roll with it, and wait to react to whatever happened. She tried to empty her mind, to concentrate just on drawing in each painful breath.

  A breeze pushed more steadily at her face now; she felt it riffle her short hair, and her loose jumpsuit billowed gently against her chest and legs.

  She watched the dome more carefully, focusing on the nearest of the seemingly randomly placed singularity-cannon vents, about two hundred yards in from the rim of the craft. By measuring it against her thumbnail she saw that the vent was growing, tipping toward her like an opening mouth.

  She found herself sighing with a small, odd regret. So much for her little interlude in the air; it looked as if the world of events was drawing her back in again.

  The gray construction-material dome was looming up at her now; she was going to hit about twenty yards up from the earth-lined rim of the craft. Well, she was glad to avoid the vents for the moment; the Xeelee material was monomolecular, and she remembered the razor-sharp edges of the doorway to Shira's hut...

  The gravity on this part of the dome would be about a quarter of the Earth-normal field in the interior of the craft. Enough to cause her to hit hard. She tried to orient herself in the stiffening wind, her arms and legs bent slightly, her hands held before her face.

  * * *

  Michael opened his eyes.

  He was breathing normally. Thank God. He took a luxurious draught of thick, warm air.

  He was inside the metal box that was the boat's airlock. The floor felt soft below him... too soft. He probed beneath him with his right hand, and found the metal floor a few inches below his spine; inadvertently he shoved himself a little farther into the air.

  Weightless. They'd made it into space.

  When he turned his head, his shoulders, chest, and neck still ached from their labors in the thin air of the earth-craft. Beside him Shira was curled into a question mark, the diffuse light of the airlock throwing a soft highlight from the elegant dome of her head. Her face looked very young in her sleep. Trickles of blood, meandering in the weightless conditions, snaked from her ears.

  Poole lifted cautious fingers to his own face. Blood at his nose and ears. And the sudden movement made him rock in the air; his hovering legs dangled and banged together, and the pain from his damaged shins and feet flared anew. He cried out, softly.

  Harry's face popped into being just in front of his own. "You're alive," Harry said. "Awake, as a matter of fact."

  Poole found his voice reduced to an ugly scratch. "Great timing, Harry. Why didn't you run it a bit closer?"

  Harry's eyebrows raised a little. "Piece of cake," he said.

  "Let me sleep." Michael closed his eyes.

  "Sorry. We dock with the Crab in one minute. Then we've got to get out of here. We're assaulting a mile-wide sentient warship from the future. Or don't you remember the plan?"

  Michael groaned and squeezed his eyes tighter.

  * * *

  Berg's hands, feet, and knees hit the unyielding surface first. The construction material was slick, smoother than ice, a shock of sudden cold in her palms. She let her hands and feet slide away from beneath her. She turned her face away so that her chest and thighs hit the surface comparatively softly.

  She lay spread-eagled, flattened against the dome. She lay for a few minutes, the breath hissing through her teeth, her cheek flat against the cold Xeelee substance.

  She'd had worse landings.

  The light changed.

  She lifted her head. Once more the Spline was rising over the curved horizon of the dome, a malevolent moon of flesh, cratered by eyes and weapon snouts.

  Chapter 11

  HARRY'S VOICE WAS STRAINED. "Michael. The Spline is attacking the earth-craft."

  Michael Poole, the Crab's two gravities heavy on his chest, lay in a reclined couch. The subdued lights of the Crab's lifedome were a comforting sea of familiarity all around him.

  Above him, directly ahead of the advancing Crab, the Spline they had chosen to chase loomed like a moon of ugly flesh, growing perceptibly. Other ships orbited the Spline in a slow, complex gavotte. The whole tableau was almost pleasing to watch; peaceful, silent.

  Poole felt tired, his capacity to absorb change exhausted. Lying here was almost like the precious days when he had sailed alone through the Oort Cloud.

  The girl Shira, in a couch beside Poole's, her frail frame crushed by the two-gravity thrust, wept softly. Poole turned to her reluctantly. Her face was gaunt. There was moisture under her eyes, her nose, patches of colors in her cheeks; her eyes were like red wounds. Harry's disembodied head floated in shadow some feet above them both, no expression readable.

  "Damn it," said Poole. "Harry, bring up an image of the earth-craft."

  A section of the dome turned opaque, hiding the Spline and its ineffectual human attendants; the opaque section filled with a salmon-pink wash, an inverted slab of grass-green, a ball of hull-flesh. The little cup-shaped earth-craft, dwarfed, hung beneath the attacking warship like some absurd pendant; and it hung with its grassy face averted, its construction-material belly turned up to the Spline like a submissive animal. Cherry-red fire flic
kered from the gut of the Spline, dimming Jupiter's light. The earth-craft shuddered visibly.

  "Starbreakers," Shira breathed, eyes wide. "The Spline is using starbreakers."

  "What did you expect?" Poole replied grimly. "Can the Xeelee material withstand starbreaker beams?"

  "I don't know. Perhaps for a while. The earth-craft isn't a warship, Michael."

  Poole frowned. In the magnified and enhanced image of the dome the singularity-cannon portals looked like breaches in an armor plate. Presumably the causality stress was still impairing the Spline's power and accuracy. But if the Spline got through one of those portals it would be over, no matter how tough this magical Xeelee substance was.

  Suddenly there was smoke, fire erupting from one of the cannon mouths. The light was an intense blue, heavily loaded to the ultraviolet. Poole, used to the silent flickering of light and particle weapons, stared. Two points of light, intensely bright and whirling around each other, shot out of the cannon and spiraled along the column of smoke and light toward the patient bulk of Jupiter.

  Harry said, "What the hell was that?"

  "Singularities," Poole breathed. "I can scarcely believe it. They're working their cannon; they've fired off two of their singularities. The Friends are fighting back. Maybe Berg—"

  "No." Shira's face, though damp with weeping, was composed. "It's the Project. They are proceeding with the Project." Her eyes were bright, seemingly joyful, as she stared upward.

  Starbreaker light flared. Overloaded, the lifedome turned black, the image imploding; then the dome cleared once more.

  Now, above Poole's head, the Spline he was chasing was turning, weapon pits glinting like mouths.

  "I think they've spotted us," Harry said.

  * * *

  The belly of the Spline came down like a lid. The nearest cannon-mouth portal was still yards away.

  Berg threw herself flat against the construction-material dome. Hull-flesh rolled above her, silent and awesome, like the palm of some giant hand. There were pockmarks big enough to hide artillery pieces, metal artifacts glinting in their depths; and now a huge wounded area swept over her, an inverted pool of blood and disrupted flesh. Something swam in that thick, oillike blood, she saw: symbiotic organisms — or constructs — patiently tending to the worst of the damage. With acres of charnel-house meat suspended over her head, she found herself gagging; but, of course, there was no smell, no sound; the Spline was still outside the atmosphere of the earth-craft.

  Would Xeelee construction material stop the weapons of a Spline warship? Maybe not. But it sure would help...

  She had to get inside the dome.

  Trying to ignore the looming ceiling of flesh she slithered on her belly toward the hole in the dome.

  It was too slow, too damn slow. After a few seconds she stopped, rested her face against the dove-gray cheek of the Xeelee material.

  This was ridiculous. Crawling wasn't going to make a difference, one way or the other; it could only slow her down.

  Muttering encouragement to herself, keeping her eyes off the nightmare covering the sky, she pushed herself up to a kneeling position, got her legs under her, stood uncertainly.

  As if in response cherry-red brightness burst all around her; the dome shuddered like a living thing.

  She was thrown to her face.

  Then, when the singularity cannon fired, Berg's body actually rattled against the shuddering Xeelee material. She pushed herself away from the dome, leaving smears of blood from her nose, her bruised mouth.

  She got to her feet. There was a stink of ozone; a wind pressed at her chest, weak in the thin air. Twin points of light — which must be singularities — climbed a tube of smoke into the pink-stained sky. The points whirled around each other like buzzing fireflies. She gave a hoarse cheer: at last, it seemed, the good guys were fighting back...

  But then she saw that the smoke tube the singularities were following almost grazed the surface of the dome; it passed neatly through the gap between the dome and the lumbering belly of the Spline and arced toward Jupiter.

  The Friends weren't trying to attack the Spline, to defend themselves; they were firing their singularities at Jupiter. Even at a time like this, all they cared about was their damn Project.

  "Assholes," Berg said. She started running.

  Ignoring the pain of the thinness of the atmosphere in her lungs, the heady stench of scorched air, the buffeting winds, the shuddering dome, she tried to work out what she'd do when she got to the mouth of the cannon. The tubes were about three feet wide, and she'd have about twenty yards to fall to the inner base of the dome; she could probably slide through the first few yards and then use her hands and feet to brake—

  Starbreaker light flared hellishly all around her. Abandoning all conscious plans, she wrapped her arms around her face and dived headfirst into the cannon tube.

  * * *

  Even though the Spline's weapon ports must be open now — even though the warship from the future must look like some fleshy wall across the sky, massive and menacing, to the natives of this era — a lone matchstick craft was coming at them out of the flotilla of ships, flaring along a two-gee curve straight for the Spline.

  Jasoft Parz could hardly believe it.

  The ship was about a mile in length. Its drive-fire plumed from a block of comet ice; from the block emerged a long, delicate, open-frame metal stalk, tipped by a clear lifedome. The dome was a pool of subdued light; Jasoft could almost imagine he could see humans moving about in the dome, actual people.

  Jasoft recognized the design from the research he'd performed for the dead Governor. This was a GUT ship, driven by the phase energy of decoupling superforces. It looked so fragile.

  Something moved in Jasoft, lost and isolated as he was in the grotesque eyeball of the Spline.

  There had to be something he could do to help.

  He pushed away from the lens. With short, heavy strokes in the thick entoptic fluid, he cast about the eye chamber, looking for some way to damage his Spline host.

  * * *

  Berg rattled down the translucent singularity-cannon tube.

  The barrel seemed to be sheltering her from the blazing red light of the starbreaker assault, but its surface proved to be slick and unyielding; her hands or feet could not gain any kind of purchase on the walls of the tube. So she kicked out at the walls as she collided with them, jamming herself as hard as she could against the opposite side: anything to generate a little friction. She knew the lower mouth of the tube was six feet above the crystalline floor of the inner chamber. Berg tried to twist in the tube so she'd land butt-first, protecting her head and arms—

  She plummeted out of the cannon.

  The plane of singularities, diamond points in a lattice of blue-white light, rushed up to meet her, slammed into her back.

  For long seconds she lay there spread-eagled, staring up at the Xeelee-material dome. Cherry-red light glimmered in distant cannon mouths.

  She gingerly moved her legs, wriggled her fingers. There was a cacophony of pain, but nothing seemed to be broken. Her lungs, back, and chest felt like a single mass of bruises, though; and it was hard to expand her lungs, to take a decent breath.

  It felt nice to lie here, she thought, just to lie here and to watch the light show...

  Starbreaker light flared anew beyond the dome — no, she realized with a shock; now it was shining through the dome — and as she watched Xeelee construction material blistered, bubbling like melting plastic.

  She'd postpone blacking out until later, she decided.

  She rolled over and climbed painfully to her feet, ignored the clamoring stiffness, the pain in her legs and chest.

  The hollow heart of the earth-craft was a hive of activity. Friends ran everywhere carrying bits of equipment, working control panels, shouting instructions to each other. But there was no chaos, or panic, Berg saw. The Friends knew exactly what they were doing. There was something of the air of a great installation �
�� a power plant, perhaps — in the throes of some crisis.

  In the commotion no one seemed to have observed her unorthodox entrance. There was damage around her, evidence of the huge assault; close to her there was a burned-out control console, two young, gaunt bodies splayed over it.

  A cannon tube flared, forcing her to shield her eyes; a pair of singularities hurtled out of the plane beneath her feet, dazzled up into a cannon tube, and soared beyond the dome like ascending souls. She felt the plane beneath her shudder as the whole craft recoiled from the launch of so much mass.

  And now there was a rush of noise above her, like the exhalation of a giant. She glanced up. The damaged area of the dome was beginning to glow white-hot; around a quarter of the dome was sagging, losing its structural integrity under the sustained Spline assault.

  There was a smell of burning.

  Berg recognized a man — a boy, really — the Friend Jaar, who'd taken Poole on his sightseeing tour of this place. Jaar was working at the center of a little group of Friends, poring over slates that bore what looked like schematics of singularity trajectories. There was soot and blood smeared over his bare scalp, and his jumpsuit was torn, begrimed; he looked tired, but in control.

  In a few strides Berg crossed the chamber. She forced her way through the knot of people and grabbed Jaar's arm, pulling away his slate so he was forced to look at her.

  Irritation, overtension, crossed his face. "Miriam Berg. How did you get in here? I thought—"

  "I'll explain later. Jaar, you're under attack. What are you doing about it?"

  He pulled his arm away from her. "We are finishing the Project," he said. "Please, Miriam—"