Timelike Infinity

by Stephen Baxter

  Michael shuddered, a vast sense of loss, of alienation, sweeping over him; Harry's face was an incongruously cheerful blob of animation in a vision field otherwise filled with the emptiness of a spacetime flaw. He forced himself to reply. "I — hardly think it matters anymore. As long as we can power up the hyperdrive."

  "Sure. And I've my battalions of loyal antibody drones protecting the remaining key areas of the ship; they ought to be able to hold out until it doesn't matter one way or the other." The Virtual head plummeted disconcertingly close to Michael until it hovered a mere foot above his nose; it peered down at him with exaggerated concern. "Are you okay, Michael?"

  Michael tried to grin, to come back with a sharp reply; but the feeling of desolation was like a black, widening pool inside his head. "No." he said. "No, I'm not damn well okay."

  Harry nodded, looking sage, and receded into the air. "You have to understand what's happening to you, Michael. We're passing from one time frame to another. Remember how Jasoft Parz described this experience? The quantum functions linking you to your world — the nonlocal connections between you and everything and everybody you touched, heard, saw — are being stretched thin, broken... You're being left as isolated as if you'd only just been born."

  "Yes." Michael gritted his teeth, trying to suppress a sensation of huge psychic pain. "Yes, I understand all of that. But it doesn't help. And it doesn't help, either, that I've just left behind Miriam — everyone and everything I know — without so much as a farewell. And it doesn't help that I face nothing but death. That only the level of pain remains to be determined... I'm scared, Harry."

  Harry opened his mouth to speak, closed it again; convincing-looking tears brimmed in his eyes.

  An unreasonable anger burned in Michael. "Don't you get sentimental on me again, you damn — facsimile."

  Harry's grin was slight. "Should we activate the hyperdrive?" he asked softly. "Get this affair over and done with?"

  Michael closed his eyes and shook his head, his neck muscles stiff and tight, almost rigid. "Not yet. Wait until we're well inside the throat of the wormhole."

  Harry hesitated. "Michael, what exactly will the hyperdrive operation do to the wormhole?"

  "I don't know for sure," Michael said. "How can I know for sure? No one's tried such a damn-fool experiment before. Look, a wormhole is a flaw in spacetime, kept open by threads of exotic matter. And it's an unstable flaw.

  "When the hyperdrive operates the dimensionality of spacetime is changed, locally. And if we do that inside the wormhole itself — deep inside, near the midpoint, where the stress on the flawed spacetime will be highest — I don't see how the wormhole feedback control systems can maintain stability."

  "And then what?"

  Michael shrugged. "I've no idea. But I'm damn sure the Interface will no longer be passable, and I'm hoping that the collapse we initiate will go farther, Harry. Remember that more wormhole links have been set up, to the future beyond Jim Bolder and his heroics. I don't want to leave the opportunity for more Qax of that era to take the opportunity to come back and try wrecking history again."

  "Can we close the other wormholes?"

  Poole shrugged. "Maybe. Wormholes put spacetime under a lot of stress, Harry..."

  "...And us?" Harry asked gently.

  Michael met the Virtual's gaze. "What do you think? Look, I'm sorry, Harry." He frowned. "Well, what were you going to tell me?"

  "When?"

  "Your big secret. Just before we hit the exotic matter."

  Harry's head shrank a little in an odd, shy gesture. "Ah. I was vaguely hoping you'd forgotten that."

  Michael clucked his tongue, exasperated. "My God, Harry, we've just minutes to live and you're still a pain in the arse."

  "I'm dead."

  "What?"

  "I'm dead. The real Harry Poole, that is. The original." Harry's eyes held Michael's but his tone was level, matter-of-fact. "I've been dead thirty years, now, Michael. More, in fact."

  Michael, lost in quantum isolation, tried to make sense of this ghostly news. "How did you — he—"

  "I reacted adversely to a stage of the AS treatment. Couldn't accept it; my body couldn't take any more. One in a thousand react like that, they tell me. I lived a few more years. I aged rapidly. I — ah — I stored this Virtual as soon as I understood what was going to happen. I didn't have any specific purpose in mind for the Virtual. I didn't plan to transmit it to you. I just thought, maybe, it might be of use to you one day. A comfort, even."

  Michael frowned. "I don't know what to say. I'm sorry. I... know how much your youth, your—"

  "My good looks, health, and potency." Harry grinned. "Don't be afraid to say it, Michael; I'm kind of beyond modesty. All the things I wanted to keep, which irritated you so much."

  "I know how much life meant to you."

  Harry nodded. "Thank you. I'm thanking you for him. He — Harry — died before I, the Virtual, was animated. From my point of view I share his memories up to the point where he took the Virtual copy; then there's a gap. Before the end of his life he left me a message, though."

  Michael shook his head. "He left one of his own Virtuals a message. Well, that's my father."

  "Michael, he said he didn't fear death." Harry looked thoughtful. "He'd changed, Michael. Changed from the person I was, or am. I think he wanted me to tell you that in case you ever encountered me. Perhaps he thought it would be a comfort."

  The Spline shuddered again, more violently now, and Michael, staring beyond the dome, seemed to see detail in what had previously been formlessness. Blue-white light, sparking from tortured hull-flesh, continued to flare at the edge of his vision. Fragments of light swam from a vanishing point directly above Michael's head, swarmed down the spacetime walls, and, fading, shot down over Michael's horizon. They were flashes, sheets of colorless light; it was like watching lightning behind clouds. This was radiation generated, he knew, by the unraveling of stressed spacetime, here deep in the throat of the flaw. He gripped the couch. For the first time there was a genuine sensation of speed, of limitless, uncontrollable velocity. The lifedome was a fragile, vulnerable thing above him, no more protection than a canvas tent as he plummeted through this spacetime flaw; and he tried not to cower, to hide his head from the stretched sky that poured down over him.

  "Why didn't he tell me?"

  Harry's expression hardened. "He didn't know how to tell you. He was genuinely concerned about hurting you — I hope you believe that. But the basic reason was that the two of you haven't shared a moment of closeness, of — of intimacy — since you were ten years old. That's why." He glared down at Michael. "What did you expect? He turned to his friends, Michael."

  "I'm sorry."

  "So am I," said Harry earnestly. "So was he. But that was the way it was."

  "There's the trouble with living so damned long," Michael said. "Soured relationships last forever." He shook his head. "But still... I'd never even have heard about it if you hadn't been transmitted out to persuade me to come in from the Oort Cloud."

  "They — the multigovernment committee set up to handle this incident — thought I'd have a better chance of persuading you if you didn't know; if I didn't tell you about the death."

  Michael almost smiled. "Why the hell did they think that?"

  "What do multigovernment committees know about the relationship between father and son?"

  The walls of the wormhole seemed to be constricting like a throat. Still the lightning-like splashes of light shone through the walls. "I think it's time," Michael said. "You'll handle the hyperdrive?"

  "Sure. I guess you don't need a countdown... Michael. You have a message."

  "What are you talking about? Who the hell can be contacting me now?"

  Harry, his face straight, said, "It's a representative of the rebel antibody drones. They're not unintelligent, Michael; somehow they've patched into a translator circuit. They want me to let them talk to you."

  "What do they want?"
/>
  "They've ringed the hyperdrive. The drones consider it, ah, a hostage."

  "And?"

  "They're willing to sue for peace. In the spirit of interspecies harmony. They have a long list of conditions, though." Harry frowned down at Michael. "Do you want to hear what they are? First—"

  "No. Just tell me this. Do you still control the hyperdrive?"

  "Yes."

  Michael felt the tension drain out of his neck muscles, it seemed for the first time in days; a sensation of peace swept over him. He laughed. "Tell them where they can stick their list."

  Harry's head ballooned. He smiled, young and confident. "I think it's time. Good-bye, Michael."

  The hyperdrive engaged. The Spline warship convulsed.

  Ribbons of blue-white light poured through the cracking walls of spacetime; Michael could almost feel the photons as they sleeted through the absurd fragility of the lifedome.

  A lost corner of Michael's consciousness continued to analyze, even to wonder. He was seeing unbearable shear stresses in twisted spacetime resolving themselves into radiant energy as the wormhole failed. At any moment now the residual shielding of the lifedome would surely collapse; already the flesh of the Spline corpse must be boiling away. Knowing what was happening didn't really help, of course — something which, Michael thought, it was a bit late to discover.

  Harry's Virtual imploded, finally, under the pressure of the godlike glare beyond the dome.

  Bits of the wormhole seemed literally to fall away before the Crab. Cracks in spacetime opened up like branching tunnels, receding to infinity.

  Michael wasn't sure if that should be happening. Maybe this wouldn't go quite to plan—

  Spacetime was shattering. Michael screamed and pressed his fists to his eyes.

  * * *

  On the earth-craft, the image of the Interface portal glittered on every data slate.

  Miriam Berg sat on scorched grass, close enough to the center of the earth-craft that she could see, beyond the flattened construction-material homes of the Friends of Wigner, the brownish sandstone shards that marked the site of the ancient henge.

  Jasoft Parz, clothed in a fresh but ill-fitting Wignerian coverall, sat close to her, his short legs stretched out on the grass. The Narlikar's only boat stood on blackened earth close by her. The D'Arcys had returned her here, after her retrieval of Shira and Jasoft Parz from the Spline's severed eyeball.

  She was aware that Parz's green eyes were fixed on her. That he was almost radiating sympathy.

  Well, damn him. Damn them all.

  Her legs tucked under her, Miriam stared at the slate on her lap, at the delicate image of the portal it contained, as if willing herself to travel into the slate, shrinking down until she, too, could follow Michael Poole through the spacetime wormhole. If she concentrated really hard she could shut out all the rest of it — this strange, rather chilling man from the future beside her, the distant activities of the Friends — even the damned thin air and irregular gravity of the devastated earth-craft.

  The moment stretched. The portal glimmered like a diamond in her slate.

  Then, with shocking suddenness, blue-white light flared silently inside the portal, gushing from every one of the tetrahedral frame's facets. It was as if a tiny sun had gone nova inside the frame. The light of the wormhole's collapse glared from the slates carried by Parz, the Friends, as far as she could see; it was as if everyone held a candle before them, and the light generated by that failing spacetime flaw illuminated all their young, smooth faces.

  The light died. When she looked again at her slate the portal was gone; broken fragments of the exotic-matter frame, sparking, tumbled away from a patch of space that had become ordinary, finite once more.

  She threw the slate facedown on the grass.

  Jasoft Parz laid his slate more gently on the ground. "It is over," he said. "Michael Poole has succeeded in sealing the wormhole; there can be no doubt."

  Berg shoved her fingers, hard, into the battered earth, welcoming the pain of bent-back nails. "Those damn struts of exotic matter will have to be cleared. Hazard to navigation."

  He said, "It is over, you know. You'll have to find ways of letting it go."

  "Letting what go?"

  "The past." He sighed. "And, in my case, the future."

  She lifted her head, studied the huge, brooding bulk of Jupiter. "The future is still yours... your own future. There is plenty for you to explore here. And the Friends, of course."

  He smiled. "Such as?"

  "AS treatment for a start. And, for the first time in your lives, some modern — sorry, ancient — health checks."

  Jasoft smiled, quietly sad. "But we are aliens on our native planet. Stranded so far from our own time—"

  She shrugged. "There are plenty of you, including the Friends. And they're young, basically fit. You could found a colony; there's plenty of room. Or head for the stars." She smiled, remembering the strange voyage of the Cauchy. "Of course we don't yet have the hyperdrive to offer you. Strictly sublight only... But the wonder of the journey is no less for that, I can assure you."

  "Yes. Well, Miriam, such projects might attract these young people, if not me..."

  She looked at him now. "what do you mean? What about you, Jasoft?"

  He smiled and spread his long, age-withered fingers. "Oh, I think my story is over now. I've seen, done, learned more than I ever dreamed. Or deserved to."

  Her eyes narrowed. "You're going to refuse further AS treatment? Look, if you feel some guilt about the function you performed in the Qax Occupation era, nobody in this age is going to—"

  "It's not that," he said gently. "I'm not talking about some complicated form of suicide, my dear. And I don't suffer greatly from guilt, despite the moral ambivalence of what I've done with my life. I certainly believe I left my era for the last time aboard that damn Spline warship having done more good than harm... It's just that I think I've seen enough. I know all I could wish to know, you see. I know that although the Project of these rebels — the Friends of Wigner — has failed, Earth will ultimately be liberated from the fist of the Qax. I don't need to learn anything more. I certainly don't feel I need to see any more of it laboriously unfold. Do you understand that?"

  Berg smiled. "I think so. Though I must chide you for thinking small. The Friends of Wigner have projects that extend to the end of time."

  "Yes. And as for their future, I suspect they are already engaged on designs of their own."

  She nodded. "You've told me what Shira said. Take the long way home, by surviving through the centuries until the era of your birth returns... and then what? Start the whole damn business over again?"

  "Perhaps. Though I hear they've done a little more thinking since I spoke to Shira. You mention a sublight star trip. I think that would appeal to the Friends, if only because it would let them exploit relativistic time-dilation effects—"

  "—and get home that much quicker; in a century instead of fifteen." She smiled. "Well, it's a way to waste your life, I suppose."

  "And you, Miriam? You've been a century away yourself; this must be almost as great a dislocation for you as it is for me. What will you do?"

  She shrugged, rubbing her hair. "Maybe I'll go with the Friends," she murmured. "Maybe I'll take them to the stars and back, journey through fifteen centuries once more—"

  "—and see if Michael Poole emerges into the Qax Occupation future, dashing valiantly from the imploding wormhole?" He smiled.

  She looked up to the Jupiter-roofed zenith, trying to pick out the pieces of the shattered portal. "It might make me feel better," she said. "But, Jasoft, I know I've lost Michael. Wherever he is now I could never reach him."

  They sat for a moment, watching images of shattered exotic matter tumble through the discarded slates. At length he said, "Come. It is cold here, and the air is thin. Let us return to the Narlikar boat. I would like some more warmth. And food."

  She dropped her head from the sky. "Yeah
. That's a good idea, Jasoft."

  She stood, her legs stiff after so long curled beneath her. Almost tenderly Jasoft took her arm, and they walked together to the waiting boat.

  * * *

  Spacetime is friable.

  Wormholes riddle the fabric of spacetime on all scales. At the Planck length and below, wormholes arising from quantum uncertainty effects blur the clean Einsteinian lines of spacetime. And some of the wormholes expand to the human scale, and beyond — sometimes spontaneously, and sometimes at the instigation of intelligence.

  Spacetime is like a sheet of ice, permeated by flaws, by hairline cracks.

  When Michael Poole's hyperdrive was activated inside the human-built wormhole Interface, it was as if someone had smashed at that ice floe with a mallet. Cracks exploded from the point of impact, widened; they joined each other in a complex, spreading network, a tributary pattern that continually formed and reformed as spacetime healed and shattered anew.

  The battered, scorched corpse of the Spline warship bearing the lifedome of the Crab, Michael Poole, and a cloud of rebellious antibody drones emerged from the collapsing wormhole into the Qax Occupation era at close to the speed of light. Sheer energy from the tortured spacetime of the wormhole transformed into high-frequency radiation, into showers of shortlived, exotic particles that founted around the tumbling Spline.

  It was like a small sun exploding amid the moons of Jupiter. Vast storms were evoked in the bulk of the gas giant's atmosphere. A moon was destroyed. Humans were killed, blinded.

  Cracks in shattering spacetime propagated at the speed of light.

  There was already another macroscopic spacetime wormhole in the Jovian system: the channel set up to a future beyond the destruction of the Qax star, the channel through which Qax had traveled toward the past, intent on destroying humanity.

  Under the impact of Poole's hammer-blow arrival — as Poole had expected — this second spacetime flaw could not retain its stability.

  The wormhole mouth itself expanded, exoticity ballooning across thousands of miles and engulfing the mass-energy of Michael Poole's unlikely vessel. The icosahedral exotic-matter frame that threaded the wormhole mouth exploded, a mirror image of the destruction witnessed by Miriam Berg fifteen centuries earlier. Then the portal imploded at lightspeed; gravitational shock waves pulsed from the vanishing mouth like Xeelee starbreaker beams, scattering ships and moons like insects in a gale.