***
Chapter 6: Distress Beacon
Onboard the Phoenix
Paul tried to sleep but couldn’t. Two thousand years. It was like a B-movie script. Or a fever dream. Why, Hal?
He paced the compartment, from the pilot’s seat, past the equipment racks and the hibernation capsule, to the rear wall which separated the habitable space from the engines, and then back again. He wouldn’t just leave me stranded, would he? Wracking his brains, the only place in the universe Paul thought he might find help would be Holdrian; 120 light years away and two thousand years in the future! All the data required to get home – build a Vortex, control a light-speed drive, navigate with precision – were either in Hal’s memory, or in the Red Cubes from Bassar, and they were in a distant and secure location. Which was also two thousand years in the future! He needed help, and fast. Whenever he considered the alternative – being stuck here, with no way to stop Julius – a wave of panic rose in his gut.
The past… It was a gigantic responsibility. Paul wondered whether he’d already made irreversible changes, simply by hanging here in orbit and deflecting particles of dust from their original course.
Bashar and Cyto, the two keepers of Holdrian’s Chrono-Vortex, had been at pains to reiterate some simple rubrics. Time-travel, they repeated ad nauseum, was too dangerous to be treated as a useful luxury. It was a tool for science, and its use had to be supervised and controlled with extreme care. They would never agree that selfish time travel warranted capital punishment, as that nutcase Julius would have it, but it was simply better not to complicate things too much.
What if, for instance, he had decided to ignore Hal’s final instruction, just for a short while, and take a tour of the Earth? There were so many metaphors and stories – the ‘grandfather effect’ and such like – which warned against interfering in past events, lest the parallel present and its futures suffer as a result. Merely by causing the tiniest, seemingly insignificant change to a human being’s life – or even that of an animal - Paul could theoretically disturb vital chains of causation and upset the very course of history. Someone might see me, observing their town from a remote hill; they would inevitably say something they otherwise wouldn’t have said, and their day, and that of those around them, would subtly change. Even if they never saw me again, and if I never even spoke with them, I would have changed the timeline. Wouldn’t it be just my luck if they then failed to meet their future husband, and the genetic lineage of mankind became dangerously altered?
It wasn’t hard to imagine. So why had he been forced into this impossible past, where any action was potentially fatal to his future self? Or should that be, his present self? It was enough to make his head spin, and it did.
He focused on what was concrete, the only thing he really knew: Get to Earth-Moon L1. There are five Lagrange points, created by the relative gravitational fields of the Earth and the Moon. Their most useful feature, Paul knew, was that the relative gravity of the two bodies would cancel each other out, allowing a spacecraft to effectively hover in space, steadily orbiting an invisible gravitational eddy. As Phoenix approached the correct position in space, the ship’s computer spoke.
“We are approaching Earth-Moon L1. There is an object ahead.”
Paul finally snapped. “Oh, wonderful!” he cried, his tone deeply sarcastic. “Praise be for that welcome deluge of useful information, Phoenix. An object? An OBJECT?! What KIND of fucking OBJECT? A big one? A small one? Animal, vegetable or fucking mineral?!”
The computer delayed its answer long enough that Paul sensed he might actually have hurt its feelings. In reality, the cameras in the nose of the ship were taking time to resolve the strangely-shaped object and carry out an initial analysis.
The results were staggering: “It is Hal.”
Paul guffawed rudely. “Bollocks, Phoenix. Hal is two thousand years in the future, in Wales. Or, depending on what the fuck happened back there, he’s ceased to exist. Check your data.”
The craft slowed into a neat, circular orbit of the Lagrange point. “The data is confirmed, Paul. Hal is communicating with the ship.”
Paul blinked a few times. “Communicating…?”
“I have a message from him.”
Paul tried to ask for the message played, but no sound came out. Finally he managed, “OK.”
His friend’s voice filled the cabin. “Welcome to L1, Paul. I am six thousand, two hundred miles away, on your sunward side. Please pick me up.”
A wave of the most immense relief brought tears to his eyes. For the last two hours, he realized, he had hardly breathed. The uncertainty of his situation, the raw and intolerable powerlessness of it, had created a ball of hot dread in his gut.
“Oh, God… Hal.” A single tear actually hit the floor of the Phoenix. “Holy crap, buddy, I’m glad you’re here. I’ll come and get you. Hold on.”
Paul suited up and made arrangements for the Phoenix to rendezvous with the drifting machine. The ship reoriented so that he could see the tiny speck of Hal’s makeshift vessel through the cabin windows. “Look who got himself a whole new thing going on! Hal, the Spacefarer. Must have been quite a trip!”
The airlock at the rear of the Phoenix depressurized. Paul attached his safety line to the airlock’s door jamb and allowed himself to float slowly over to where Hal was waiting. The computer was encased in a tough but transparent shield, the better to regulate temperature, and beneath the shield was a pair of sturdy, classical rocket engines. “Are these old F-1s?” Paul asked, using his suit’s attitude control jets to slow him to a safe closing speed.
“The only thing we had in the workshop. I was studying them. It turns out they’re excellent motors.”
The floating astronaut found grab-handles on the side of the shield block and attached more lines. “The Apollo guys would agree, Hal.” Paul then used more thruster firings to gently pull the stack, many times his own size, back towards the Cruiser. “How do I get you out of the heat shield?”
Soundlessly, the shield popped open, revealing its symmetrical, shroud-like design, and glided serenely away into space. “Let’s get on board quickly, Paul. I don’t know how much solar heating my quantum circuits can take. I’ve been here quite a while, you know.”
The machine sounded slightly tired, Paul noted. With the loss of the shield, other bolts had loosened and the engine fairings were slipping out from under Hal’s own chassis. Within moments he was free. Paul wasted no time. He slid Hal gently into the airlock, followed him in, and closed the hatch, ready for re-pressurization. Phoenix pulsed her own thruster jets to ensure against a collision with the twin F-1 engines, their huge bells glinting in the ever-present sunlight. “Von Braun would have kittens if he could see this.”
“I think,” Hal said as he was gingerly brought aboard the Phoenix, “I’m just about ready to have some myself.”
***
Twenty minutes later, Hal was indignant. “Look. You can’t just call me a ‘rat bastard’ without letting me explain. So, you’re two thousand years in the past. You don’t imagine that I had thought the matter through?”
Paul chewed on a stick of celery and then pointed it accusingly at the computer’s black box. “Oh, not at all! I’m sure there’s some grand, intricate plan. I can’t wait for this one, Hal, really. I’m all ears.”
“Well, firstly, are you OK? The Larssen incident must have been pretty upsetting.”
“Yeah,” Paul began, “I don’t love it when my whole reality is threatened. But I’m getting over it. Just…” He breathed for a while. “You know what I need to hear, Hal. Just lay it all down, OK?”
Hal began. “We’re going to travel to Julius’ home planet and prevent him from getting hold of the Larssen. Without it, he will be unable to begin his campaign of Chrono-travel deletions, and he’ll never be able to show up in 2034. Or at any other time.”
“Great! Where is it?” Paul was halfway to the navigation console when the answer came.
&nbs
p; “About two thousand light-years away.”
Fucking hell. That explains it.
“And we’re going to travel at light speed for the next two thousand years?” Paul asked, aghast. “Is that even survivable?”
Linked up now to the ship’s cameras, speakers and microphones, Hal was able to regarded his tired, stressed, long-suffering friend, and did so with a compassion which transcended Hal’s machine origins. How could he ask this of Paul, who had already endured so much, traveled so far, and worked so hard? It would necessitate a uniquely punishing hyper-sleep; twenty centuries was definitely beyond the safety limit, and beyond even one or two, the medical implications were simply unknown. Would even the slowest-paced and best-protected biological system simply break down? Hal could only extrapolate, and on these time-scales, his findings were close to pure guesswork.
“You won’t be asleep for the full duration. We’ll need to stop for fuel.”
“Where?”
Hal brought up a complex, 3-D graphic of their region of the Milky Way, projected into the middle of the ship’s cabin. “I’ve computed eight possible routes which give us three, four or five refueling stops. These are icy or watery planets, moons and asteroids with no known record of habitation.”
Paul tracked some of the trajectories with his hand. “You said no known record?”
The great machine seemed almost embarrassed. “I have only the information I brought with me – Takanli’s deep-space tracking data and the Ministry’s historical database – plus some of my own findings. It is not inconceivable that we will encounter other life-forms, but we are, under no circumstances, to interact with them.”
Sitting back in the pilot’s seat, Paul let out a long sigh. “We’re going to get to know each other real well, Hal. I hope you don’t get on my nerves.”
“Likewise, I’m sure,” quipped the computer.
Paul chewed it over. There was no alternative, he knew, but it was such a long way. Takanlian vessels had completed multiple light-year round-trips a few times. Daedalus had done several. This was in a different class entirely. He would become the greatest traveler in the history of… the universe, perhaps?
Cool your jets, Major Tom. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
“OK, Hal. If we’ve got two thousand light-years to go, let’s get started.”
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
Hal closed the graphic. “You know I said I’d been at L1 for quite a while?”
Paul recalled his earlier curiosity at this odd remark. “Yeah, how the hell did you get out there, anyway?”
“I had the diligent and timely support of the United States Air Force and Navy.”
Paul blinked for a second. “Captain Tanner?”
“The very same. She and a talented, if rather irascible, colleague with access to some high-performance equipment. They ferried me from Wales to Sculthorpe. There, I was mated to the F1-mashup you saw, and it had just enough power to boost me out of Earth orbit and onto a trajectory toward the Vortex.”
Paul applauded quietly. “Genius, Hal. Some quick thinking in what I’m sure was a shitty situation.”
“Deeply shitty. But… Well. Erm.” There was a tone to Hal’s voice Paul had never heard before.
“Yes, Hal?”
“There was a… problem. With the Vortex. A… how shall I put it?”
“I don’t know, Hal. Why don’t you just put it?”
“There may have been a miscalculation.”
He stared at the black box as if it had grown a head. “A what?”
The machine was actually flustered. Paul couldn’t believe it. “There were complex interference patterns between the two vortices. Your journey was flawless, I’m proud to say, but by the time those lumbering old F-1 engines had finally gotten me there, it was only moments before Julius was ready to Chrono-travel through his own Vortex, and the physics of the two became somewhat… experimental.”
Paul took a deep breath. “With what result, Hal?”
“Well, I passed through the Vortex and arrived at the correct location. Instructions were sent for the engines to power up and get me to L1 as soon as they could, but the navigation computer wouldn’t accept the co-ordinates.”
“Was it a software problem?” Paul asked.
“No, I designed the software myself and it worked perfectly,” he reassured Paul. “It was more of a… geographical problem.”
“What was wrong with your location?”
If a computer could turn crimson, Hal would have done so. “I arrived before the Formation Events. There was no Earth-Moon L1, because there was neither Earth, nor Moon.”
Paul allowed an eloquent silence to reign in the ship, awaiting clarification of this patent insanity.
“The Vortex delivered me nearly six billion years into the past,” Hal said.
There was a long silence. Hal was giving Paul time to process this simply ludicrous fact. It took several minutes.
“Six… billion… years?!” Paul finally spluttered. “You were waiting for me … hanging out there at L1.. since before the formation of the Earth?”
Hal actually managed to brush it off. “Oh, it was OK, really. I’m pretty patient. There was plenty of time to think and do a little traveling. I’ll tell you about it later.”
“The Six Billion Year Trip? I can’t wait to read that report, Hal.”
“It was indeed fascinating.” And that, seemingly, was all he would add on the matter.
Paul tried to move on, his mind seemingly fragmenting amid the sheer enormity of Hal’s impromptu jaunt. “So, there’s some reason why we can’t leave on our big trip yet, you were saying?”
“Yes, yes. There’s something else, if you think you can cope.”
“Probably not,” Paul admitted. “But I feel like I’ve already completely lost my mind, so what difference will it make? Fire away, buddy.”
“I’ve been getting a broken but relatively consistent distress signal for the last eight months.”
Yep, insanity beckons. “Distress?”
“Indeed. Apologies both for melting your circuits, and for delaying our departure, but I really think we should respond.”
“From Earth?” Paul immediately worried at the prospect of descending into the midst of a humanity which mostly still held that the Earth was flat.
“No, not from Earth.”
Paul screwed up his face until it hurt. “Then, where?”
Hal brought up the 3-D holographic projection once more and focused on the familiar shape of the Sol system. He explained some background, and charted a trajectory. “We’ll be there in five days, using a low-energy transfer route, and we can refuel once we get there. The surface is rich in water ice, which will make excellent fuel.”
Amid this chaotic chain of pronouncements, Paul managed to find a little humor. “Low-energy, huh? You’re talking about traveling three billion miles in less than a week.”
“Such is the power of our Takanli engine, Paul.”
“We have much to thank them for. Just hope I can one day do it in person.” He paused, yawned and stretched, and then shook his head to clear it. “OK, buddy. Whatever you say. Besides, I haven’t been there before. The old Voyager 2 pictures make it look real pretty.”
Hal laid in the course while Paul got some rest. He fell asleep with a sudden completeness known only to the utterly exhausted.
***
Chapter 7: Dvalin Diplomacy
Senator Marcus Beasley was in the middle of his eighth meeting on this not untypical morning, and it was proving to be the slowest and the most frustrating so far. Twenty minutes in, and with his time and patience rapidly ebbing away, Beasley was receiving a lecture from Dr. Faizal Ahmad, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and Pakistan’s new finance minister. His arguments were cogent and expressed in immaculate English, but to Beasley, they were yet another rehashing of discredited notions.
“Senator, you must understand that the world economy operates thr
ough well-established systems of supply and demand,” Ahmad informed him. “Economic policy cannot suddenly be handed over to a computer. The very idea is the purest nonsense.” The fact that global consent was being sought was apparently forgotten; most of the objections Beasley heard were to do with political control, not economics, and Ahmad’s position was no different.
The idea was reassuringly simple, but the devil was in the detail. Hal would take effective control of global economic policy, respecting local customs and traditions where possible, but steering world affairs toward a more sustainable and more equitable future. Tax systems, trade, banking and investments, all would become Hal’s responsibility. His aim, as ever, was to relieve human suffering and create a better world. The price of these advances would be the surrendering of human agency over the world’s financial system. Instead, it would be placed in the hands of a computer program.
To some, the very idea seemed ludicrous. The Saudi delegation, who had stormed out of Beasley’s office the previous afternoon, lambasted Hal as ‘un-Islamic’ and threatened to declare a fatwa on the machine, the first of its kind. Beasley had found himself on the wrong end of a lengthy reprimand by the Chinese, who complained of ‘unacceptable interference’ in their domestic policy. Ultimately, they had found Hal’s ideas unpalatable because – and this was the Chinese, for heaven’s sake – they represented, “unworkable, doctrinaire, left-wing boilerplate, masked only by a cumbersome, machine-age upgrade”.
Persuading the Argentine delegation, the Swiss, and even a remarkably prickly French group had proven easier than bringing the Dvalin notions to the government of Pakistan. The worst part, at least for Beasley, was that Dr. Ahmad recognized that change was needed, and perhaps even approved so fundamentally of the proposed methods, but like so many others during these meetings, was obliged the represent and government, and an electorate, which simply hadn’t come to grips with them yet. It was enough to tax even Beasley’s legendary calm.
And that was before he received Evelyn Tanner’s message, warning him that something – they still did not know what – was approaching Earth from deep space. Hal was on his way up there, Beasley knew, leaving behind his earthbound representatives. Beasley could only hope that these Delegates would prove to be as competent as the real thing. And that Tanner would bring the rising panic under control.
Clarion: The Sequel to Voyage (Paul's Travels) Page 9
