Permanence

by Karl Schroeder

  Rue began to laugh. Oh no, it would not do to tell Max that this whole trip had been unnecessary, that she had been rich all along and not known it. Still, she looped the heirloom around her neck and let it nestle out of sight inside her blouse. Then she wiped her eyes, coughed past the lump in her throat and flew back to Max's room. She had to tell him that, fearful though he might be, they could not hide here, but tomorrow would announce themselves to whatever waited at Jentry's Envy.

  PART TWO

  Household Gods

  7

  MICHAEL BEQUITH SORTED through a cloud of public inscape windows his employer had left open and floating over his bed. Usually Michael's eyes and hands were on his task— everything he did was done with meticulous perfection. Today, his hands went about their task, closing, nesting, and arranging insubstantial windows with the usual precision. His mind was elsewhere.

  Dr. Herat's room was bigger than Michael's, but that was not saying much. Laurent Herat, Ph.D., had inhabited a metal cell four by five meters in dimension for the last three months. Michael's room was three by four. There was no decoration in these living quarters, beyond a failed attempt at wood panelling on some of the walls. The lights were harsh, the air recycled and flat and there were no physical windows because they were twenty meters underground.

  Twice a day the walls shook with the force of a tidal bore thundering overhead. Dr. Herat was always in the control room during the tides, so Michael had taken that as the best time to tidy up after the professor. The rest of the day was his own, for there was precious little he could do for Herat in a research station as minimalistic as this one. He struggled with the vagaries of interstellar e-mail, trying to keep up with the academic debates raging back home, but his summaries for Herat were meager these days. They both knew where the discussion was going to leave them, anyway.

  He finished arranging the windows and looked around for any other untidiness. Dr. Herat always left a half-glass of wine on the bedside table from last night. It was his habit to sip that while reading his mail and jotting notes on the day's research. Today the glass was there, but it was still full.

  That was odd. Dr. Herat was in a glum mood lately; Michael had read the exobiologist's last report and knew it was doomed to explode like a bombshell back home. It was, in fact, an attack on the whole endeavor that had sent Herat and his research assistant to this and dozens of other worlds. It called into question the grant expenditures of a hundred top scientists. The first casualty of the grant application process was truth; Herat was going to be pilloried and he knew it.

  Maybe he was just tired. Dr. Herat wasn't as young as he'd been when Michael first sought out his patronage. (Neither was Michael, but that sort of consideration never entered his mind.) Herat usually worked fourteen-hour days and slept only five hours. He had been operating on this schedule, machinelike, for ten years now. Small wonder that he should finally start nodding off before reading his mail.

  Michael took the wine and dumped it in the metal sink. Then he took one last look around and left the room.

  On other worlds he would have had a full day ahead of him. There was much organization to be done, sometimes behind Dr. Herat's back. Michael knew the supply clerks on thirty stations and understood the vices and habits of a dozen starship pursers. He could usually anticipate Herat's need for equipment or supplies and more than once he'd acquired pieces of equipment from half-legal sources that no amount of pleading with the Panspermia Institute had been able to produce. Dr. Herat proclaimed Michael's talents uncanny, but it was merely that he spent all his time learning the human side of bureaucracy and working it to their advantage.

  Kadesh was not their usual research destination. Herat had a great reputation and several times in the past had been called in to examine priceless relics of ancient extinct civilizations. On those occasions the skies of the «dig» planet had swarmed with ships— news media, other researchers, guard ships, the yachts of the rich. There were no ruins on Kadesh; there was no swarm of ships, only the supply ship in orbit and this lone station buried under the tidal flats of a northern continent.

  The tides were such that Michael couldn't even go out for a walk if he wanted to.

  By his watch it was about fifteen minutes until the next bore. He stood in the narrow hallway for a bit, debating where to go. Finally boredom drove him back to his own room.

  He sat on the bed and studied the walls. It was good to be leaving this place, even if they didn't know where they would go next. It might be time for Herat to resume his long-neglected teaching practise on Noctis Regina. Certainly Herat needed to do some hard thinking about his future. For the first time in five years, Michael knew he needed to do the same.

  A chime sounded in his mind: an inscape call. "Dr. Bequith! Please call up."

  He stood, relieved that he was wanted. "Bequith here," he said.

  "Get your ass up here now, man, your boss is still out on the flats and the bore's coming in!"

  For a second he just stared at the bed; then Michael was out the door and running.

  The station was shaped like a can, buried on end. He raced up the zigzagging stairs from the living quarters, through the exercise level and the galley level and to the control room in record time. The research associates were crowding around a screen there, babbling and pointing.

  "Where is he?" Michael demanded of Hart, a young and insolent RA who usually haunted the control room because nobody tolerated him anywhere else. Hart's face was twisted in a sneer.

  "He's wading," said Hart. "Won't come back in. Says he wants to watch the bore."

  "We've all done it," said Meline, a planetologist Herat had worked with before. "But you don't go down to the shoreline! You stand at the top of the ladder. That way you can slam the hatch before it gets too close." Her voice slightly emphasized the word it.

  "All right," said Michael. "I'll fetch him in." He clattered up the next flight of steps, to the suit room. It took two precious minutes to get into his quarantine suit, then another to walk through the scouring jets that removed all trace of Earthly microbial life from the suit's surface. He paced clumsily to the airlock and when it finally released him into the bottom of the ladder well he wondered if he was too late. The bore would arrive any minute now.

  He pulled himself out of the well into Kadesh's sunshine.

  Kadesh's one moon was much bigger and closer to the planet than Earth's Luna. The tides here were orders of magnitude higher; there were few coastal areas that had not been pounded into gentle inclines by millions of years' worth of tsunamis. Here at the shoreline of the largest continent, Michael could have waded two kilometers out to sea before the water came above his waist. The flat vista was deceptively calm, the air blue with towering pillow clouds.

  Any second now a wall of water three hundred meters high would come racing over the horizon, carrying with it a froth of boulders as big as houses. Michael had seen it on video; it was over almost before your eye told you what it was.

  The scientist was hunkered down in the very shallows, a gloved hand swishing in the water.

  Michael jumped as horns sounded from behind him. The sound was urgent, the kind that might have heralded an attack from the air in centuries past. "Doctor Herat?" Michael's voice sounded loud in his own earphone, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to voice the urgency he felt. It would violate the pact of propriety he and the doctor shared. "You'd better get in here, sir. Tide's almost on us."

  "I know." Dr. Herat sounded tired. He stood up slowly (reluctantly?) and began walking along the shoreline. He was a tall, rangy man, his angular frame somewhat softened by the quarantine suit. He didn't look at Michael, but continued to gaze out at the regular pattern of rounded shapes half-visible beneath the waves.

  It looked from here like gray diamond-shaped bricks, each about forty centimeters across, paved the coastal floor for many kilometers. Long tongues of the same substance reached up the sandy shore. Herat's team had been observing them for weeks and
they had seen the transformation that was about to take place, but only on-screen.

  Michael watched him warily. Dr. Herat was coming back, but slowly. Maybe he just wanted to see the transformation with his own eyes.

  Dr. Herat walked up the low rise that led to the bunker and paused when he was close enough to dash to the entrance, but far enough away that he had a good view of the shore. Then he sat down on a rounded boulder.

  Michael loped down to stand over him. "Sir! What are you doing? It's almost on us!"

  "We can make it in time from here," drawled Herat. "I just want to see it come in."

  This was so totally out of character that Michael found he had nothing to say. There was a brief silence, as they both stared out over the ocean.

  Michael forgot the tidal threat momentarily as he saw the well-ordered tile pattern beneath the water swirl and change. In the space of a few seconds a tumult of activity rolled in from the deeper sea; some of the «bricks» retracted into the sand, while others rose. The pattern was different every time, but it always involved long walls and trenches whose exact spacing and orientation was determined by the strength and velocity of the incoming tidal bore.

  Dr. Herat sighed. "We know what is happening out there, and we know why; but we haven't got a clue how." He squinted up at Michael. "I never really believed it before, but you know, Michael, I don't think we'll ever fully understand that."

  He turned back to the strange vista. "But it is beautiful," he said quietly.

  Outside the narrow frame of the video, the full sight was astonishing. The entire ocean floor had come to resemble an Oriental carpet, its detailing done in raised or lowered shells. The photosynthesizing creatures known as Kadists— neither animal nor plant— that grew these armored domes had acted as one entity over an area of many kilometers. What's more, they had crafted a diffraction grating out of their own bodies. The tidal bore would hit this and shake itself to pieces because of the resonances it set up. Nutrients that would otherwise have been carried many kilometers inland to be deposited on the lifeless deserts of the continent, would instead fall straight down to nurture the living plain that had stopped the tidal wave.

  Something glinted in the distance. "Doctor! Now!" Michael took Herat's arm as a white line appeared on the horizon. It thickened by the second. So far, there was no sound.

  Herat looked up, sighed and levered himself to his feet.

  Michael took his arm and they ran for the bunker's hatch. It was farther away than he'd estimated. As Michael ran the last ten meters he could hear a rising roar behind him. Still, he did his duty and made sure Dr. Herat was first down the hatch. Michael himself didn't look back until he had his hands on the ladder.

  A cliff of white water rose above him. Deep inside it emeralds shone.

  He ducked down and slammed the round hatch. The next instant, the hatch was hit by something massive. Michael nearly fell down the ladder. Dr. Herat was waiting for him at the bottom.

  "That was idiotic, sir. What were you thinking?"

  "I knew what I was doing." Dr. Herat, who seldom smiled lately, was grinning like a fool. Michael glowered at his employer, but he was too puzzled right now to say more.

  Above and around them a deep vibration rattled the fixtures. Still smiling, Dr. Herat put his hand on the wall. They could always feel the strength of the tidal bore through the metal of the station.

  "It's got a rhythm to it," said the scientist, "an almost musical one. The AI can't figure out how the Kadists know what patterns to craft: those gray lumps have a better mental model of local conditions than we do."

  "Sir, why did you stay so long?"

  "I thought… maybe we've been missing the essential experience by just not being out there. We hide in our holes and poke our instruments out and then we try to imagine what it's like for them." Herat shook his head as he walked to the decontagion chamber. "We're not learning anything."

  "This isn't about the Kadists, is it," said Michael to his retreating back. "It's about your report to the High Commission."

  Herat didn't answer, but his pace faltered for a second as if he were about to turn and say something. He kept going into the bleach shower, where further conversation became impossible.

  By the time they met in the station's observation lounge, Meline, Harp, and the others were well into their analysis of the latest bore. The station was now drowned under several hundred meters of ocean and, outside, the Kadists would be sifting through the flotsam that had settled on them. When the tide went out, they would funnel the excess mud and stones into the deep sea again.

  "Welcome to the Topside Club," Hart said to Dr. Herat with a grin. "And you even managed to get Bequith to join you." He smirked at Michael, who simply crossed his arms and watched Herat.

  Dr. Herat was looking very tired. He didn't return Hart's smile, but spoke to Meline. "Any word on the supply ship?"

  "It's in orbit," she said. "But it's got company— a military cruiser."

  Dr. Herat sent Michael a puzzled look. He shrugged in reply; this was the first he'd heard of it. "That's funny," said Herat. "Um, any reply to my report?"

  "Not yet."

  "Okay." Dr. Herat stretched and nodded at Michael. "Let me know when the lightning bolt hits. Meanwhile I'll be in my quarters."

  Michael nodded. "I'm sure they'll see the logic of your argument, sir."

  "I'm equally sure they won't. Would you care to bet on it?"

  Michael shrugged. "I only bet when it's my idea."

  "You're a wiser man than I, Bequith."

  Michael couldn't summon a pithy reply in time, as Dr. Herat walked away. He'd never heard Herat talk like this. But then, this wasn't the first time the professor had surprised him.

  Alongside the professor, Michael had walked the ruined streets of ancient races who travelled the stars before the dinosaurs died; had floated in deep space outside the wrecks of ancient star ships whose shattered sides glittered mirror-new in starlight. He had taken mining elevators through a kilometer of stone to look at the fossilized remains of an alien nuclear reactor. Michael was shocked with awe at each new discovery. He was inspired; the NeoShinto implants in his cerebrum made it easy for him to find the kami of each place they visited. The monks of Kimpurusha, who had sent Michael with Dr. Herat, believed that humanity could perceive the Divine only in the familiar environment in which the species had evolved. In deep space, surrounded by machinery and on worlds whose scale and physical laws were literally inhuman, the human heart quailed. Human spirits shriveled. In order to survive, the NeoShintoists believed, humans had to learn to find the Divine in each new place and the Divine presented itself in endlessly different ways.

  In the dying days of their Order, Michael Bequith was a message they had cast into the ocean, hoping their teachings would live on through him.

  For years, it had worked. Michael sent his encoded kami templates out to the galactic data net, using the best and most current tricks to maintain his anonymity. He heard that thousands if not millions of people were aware of his work and that it was a great comfort to them.

  Then Dr. Herat's investigations turned to much more alien species and more terrifying places and Michael's courage began to falter.

  Today he just felt restless. Apart from the gym or the galley there was only one other place to go in the station and that was back to his room. As he walked he wondered about Laurent Herat's state of mind.

  Inside his room Michael flopped down on the bed and frowned at the gray ceiling. His own mood had been black lately, although for reasons other than Dr. Herat's. Herat had his faith in science and that was unshakable, even if it led him to conclusions that broke his heart. Up until a very short time ago, Michael would have said that he had a similar faith. But then they had visited one world too many and on Dis, he had finally run into the limits of his own beliefs.

  He sat up and faced the little table in the corner, where he had placed a curved, half-broken piece of basaltic rock taken from the shorel
ine. This was a symbol of the kami of this world, chosen by Michael in consultation with the NeoShinto AI implanted in his skull. He and the AI had found this stone on the third day of his visit and at that time he had tried and failed to derive a mystical experience from it; he had not tried since. Now he drew the room's one chair next to the table and sat down to contemplate the stone again.

  He placed his hand on the stone and closed his eyes, conjuring in memory the sight of the tidal bore coming in. He tried to recover every sense from that moment and wished again that he could have smelled the breeze and felt the cold air on his own skin. Because no one could go outside without a quarantine suit, touching this sterilized piece of basalt was as close as he would ever get to contacting the kami of Kadesh itself.

  Still, touching the stone should awaken the proper reverence in him. He remembered the awe that he'd felt, seeing that wall of water rolling toward him. And he remembered the depth of it— the emeralds.

  Emeralds… He called up the mental discipline of NeoShinto contemplation, let go of verbal thought and tried to become pure awareness.

  The AI took over smoothly; no need for the constant discipline of meditation here. Michael felt his consciousness expand to fill the stone. He heard a sound like the tide, only deeper— the music of the Kadists, perhaps. He let it carry him away.

  For a few moments he felt a reverberating awe, as if he were in the presence of some mighty being. He waited for the sensation to translate into something more, but it didn't happen. Missing was the sense of understanding. Also missing, the feeling of acceptance. Most of all, where was the sense of kinship-with-place that he had always been able to find before?

  He stared at the stone, straining, for several long minutes. Then he shook his head, let the AI fall dormant again and flopped back on the cot. Rather than feeling elevated, it seemed he could feel the weight of Kadesh's ocean settling onto his shoulders.