Permanence

by Karl Schroeder

  One day, not long after the running and shouting, a strange man came to the house. He was tall and pale and seemed nervous as he paced through the rooms. In each one he took a canister and aimed it at the furniture and fixtures. A fine smoke puffed out and fell slowly to vanish as it touched things.

  "What's that?" he had asked his father.

  "Nanotags," said Father, as if it were a curse.

  The man entered the hall and puffed smoke on the rosewood chair.

  Other men came and Michael had to go with them. They took him to a hospital and made him sleep. When he awoke he could feel the distant roar of inscape in his head, like an unsettled crowd. He felt grown-up, because he knew you weren't allowed to get inscape implants until adulthood and he was only ten years old. The men took him home and his mother cried and it was at that point that he realized something was wrong.

  He didn't know what for a while, but the inscape laid its own version of things over his sight and hearing. He would learn to tune it out, he was told; but for the moment, he couldn't.

  Now, when he looked at the rosewood chair, all he could see was the matrix of numbers superimposed on it, that told the monetary value of its parts and whole. And so with the drapes, the walls, windows, and the rice as he picked it up with his chopsticks.

  He imagined— and he knew it couldn't be so— that the people of the free halo worlds still saw things like the boy before they had put nanotags in every object and inscape in his head. As if a chair could be a mountain or a starship and not just a collection of values and registrations.

  To think this way was to miss something he hadn't even known was his when he had it.

  He would have paced the halls of the cruiser, except that the inscape illusion limited him to a very few sectors. Instead, he exercised in his room, or tried to read, and most evenings when Dr. Herat didn't need him he ended up lounging on his bed, staring at the blank ceiling, longing for home or something more fundamental.

  They entered orbit around Chandaka and Crisler lectured them about not talking to the locals. Michael tuned out and summoned a window to look at the planet. Chandaka was bigger and warmer than Kimpurusha; he looked first for polar ice caps, his habitual metric for judging a world. Chandaka's were tiny, almost an afterthought. It was a wet and blue planet, its seas captured in crescents and circles rimmed with volcanoes— the typical Coronae alternative to plate tectonics. Michael felt his spirits lift at the prospect of walking unsuited in the air and feeling a real sun on his face.

  After Chandaka, his future was cloudy. He resolved to experience this world to its full, while he could.

  * * *

  MICHAEL TRACED THE lines of intricate carving that ran along the wall, a legacy of Chandaka's history as a halo world. Hovering on the edges of his vision were tiny lines of text and numerals, inscape tags which named the Rights Owners for this place, as well as its value and history. He tried to ignore them and imagine the carvings as they had originally looked, unsullied by inscape.

  This giant building, the arcology known as the Redoubt, was apparently the oldest inhabited structure on the planet. Michael and Dr. Herat had been flown here immediately on landing on Chandaka. They had arrived at night local time— morning, by Michael's circadian rhythms. He wasn't ready to sleep, so Michael wandered the vast echoing corridors of the Redoubt in the wee hours.

  The halo-worlders who had boarded and named Jentry's Envy were billeted somewhere within the Redoubt's thousands of rooms and corridors; Michael hadn't caught a glimpse of anyone since he and the professor were shown their rooms.

  There had been a hurry-up-and-wait quality to the flight out here. The Spirit of Luna had picked up a number of other researchers on its way. Everyone seemed eager, almost frantic to be gone after the cycler. Yet, until Crisler had all the pieces in place, there was nothing to do.

  Michael had done his usual work and made friends among the new scientific staff that Crisler was building. He had learned nothing new about their destination or the reasons for Crisler's urgency and secrecy in assembling the team.

  Everyone else had turned in, so Michael wandered, thinking. At the end of one carven and frescoed corridor, huge pressure doors stamped with infinity signs stood open to what looked like an open courtyard or garden. The doors would once have kept the air in before Chandaka's volcanic carbon cycle was kick-started with deliberate meteoric pounding. Michael could smell the new air as he approached the door, and unconsciously walked faster. The breeze tasted wonderful— green and fresh.

  He stepped out onto a gravel path that led under dark trees. This garden was very extensive, but the cyclopean walls of the Redoubt reared up on all sides to enclose it. Somewhere in those tapering black towers, the rest of the expedition was asleep. Tomorrow they would be meeting the halo worlders and settling their plans. Michael didn't feel a part of that. The problem was, he didn't feel there was a place for him outside the redoubt either, unless he returned to Kimpurusha.

  He heard the crunching sound of someone walking up the gravel path and, turning, discovered it was Admiral Crisler. The admiral was walking meditatively, with his hands behind his back. He looked up and smiled at Michael. "Nice night, isn't it?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "I see you're of like mind to myself, Dr. Bequith. Soaking up the feel of being on a planet while you can, eh?"

  "Well, I just spent the past few months able to look out my window at places like this, but never touch them."

  "Yes… I remember that sense of frustration, back in the days when I was a respecter of planetary quarantines myself."

  Michael sensed an opportunity; it was time to be direct. "Sir? Why did you leave the Institute? Was it to join the military, or was that a later decision?"

  Crisler arched an eyebrow at him. "Why the curiosity? Are you thinking of leaving the good professor?"

  That hit close to home; Michael shrugged. Crisler looked away, grunted, and said, "It's never one thing that changes the direction of your life, you know. I began my scientific career believing that the aliens we studied were fundamentally like us. But they're not. Humans alone are conscious. We really are special, Bequith. Once I realized that, I realized just how precious and fragile that made us. I mean, just for you and me to be standing here talking in this garden… how rare a thing that is. It was a short step from that to wanting to protect that rarity."

  "From what?"

  Crisler stared at him. "The rebels. Son, you must know that they use alien technology. Some of them have been practicing genetic engineering on their children. They're abandoning humanity. The Rights Economy exists to keep humanity together; they want to pull us apart into a million warring species. I won't have that. Not on my watch."

  "I see."

  "I hope so." The admiral looked away, sighed heavily. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll continue my walk, and try to store up as much of this fine night air as I can."

  They nodded their goodbyes, and Crisler walked away.

  To the right lay a jungle-thick garden. Michael walked that way, listening to the titter of tiny lives around his feet, drinking in the strange spicy scents of the garden. Here were all the sensations he had been cut off from on Kadesh. Being here felt like a release from prison.

  Maybe in this place he could summon the kami. He looked about for a sheltered place to sit. As he did, movement caught his eye.

  She walked with her head down, hands behind her back. He might not have seen her at all had the faint light from Chandaka's starlike second sun not caught her oval face as she passed through a clearing. Her hair was black and she wore a jet coverall that made her face and long hands seem to float among the shadowed bushes.

  The young woman hadn't noticed him. She was humming quietly to herself as she drifted through the darkness. She paused in a dark bower and said something he didn't catch. For a moment Michael thought she was speaking to him and he was about to answer when another voice spoke from nearby her.

  "You know, it's funny." It w
as a man's voice. His accent was more familiar. "I'm out of the halo. I thought it would be simple— we'd learn to control the Envy, become millionaires, and I'd head home."

  "I'm sorry it hasn't worked out," she said. Her silhouette bent, perhaps to embrace the man. "You risked everything to trust me, Evan. I won't forget that."

  "Well… I just wanted to get back to High Space," he said gruffly. "But I thought I'd have something to show for it when I got here."

  "I know," she said, almost inaudibly. "I'm sorry. What are you going to do now?"

  "I don't know. Max and I were going over the terms of your agreement with this admiral. That's when it really hit me: I can't stay here, not as it stands. R.E. laws are so… draconian. You realize that you still don't own the Envy?"

  "I know," she said with a sigh. "Crisler knows it, too."

  "He could move to expropriate it," said the man.

  Michael tried to stay perfectly still, and breathe as shallowly as possible. This was very interesting.

  "By R.E. law, someone has to own the rights to the Envy," continued the man. "If it isn't you, then it's the state. And until you're able to control the Envy, you can't complete your claim by Cycler Compact law. So I don't get paid."

  "It's why I made this deal to go back, Evan. It's a deal with the devil, I know that. But what else am I supposed to do? I'm responsible, Evan, I know that. I can't just wash my hands of you or the others. I couldn't live with myself if any of us ended up in indentured labor somewhere."

  He laughed humorlessly. "What are we going to do about it? Crisler only needs your permission as current claim-owner to visit the Envy. Once he's there, he can expropriate it for the R.E. Then we're all sunk."

  "Believe me, I've been thinking about that a lot, Ev. But look at it this way: if we discover that she can be turned during this expedition, my claim is upheld. If we can't turn her, but it turns out in ten years that she's swung about on her own to pass Erythrion again, then my original claim is upheld. So Crisler can't expropriate until he has some idea of where she's going."

  "Hmm." The man turned to look at the stars. "Yeah, you may be right. At the Envy's velocity, even if they try to orbit her around Chandaka they'll have to do a constant expensive course correction and the orbit's probably gonna be big enough to include Erythrion. Light years in radius."

  "Right," she said. "I may have to give them what they want, but not necessarily at the expense of what I want." She sat down next to the man. "Evan, come with us. You're the only one of us who knows these people— their culture, I mean. We need you."

  "I… don't know, Rue. I spent years on the cyclers and that was fine. But when I got stranded on Erythrion…" He looked down. "I couldn't stand to be stranded again. I know myself too well. It would be the end of me."

  She hugged him. "Sometimes," she said, "you have to jump right back at whatever just bit you. And bite it back."

  Michael turned and walked away as quietly as he could.

  Later, he lay in bed and fought with himself. Although he didn't know that man he'd overheard in the garden, Michael felt for him. Stay or go? It was a dilemma he understood.

  There was no life for him with Dr. Herat anymore; he could no longer find the sacred in Service or, it seemed, in the landscapes that the NeoShinto AI was supposed to attune him to. He was adrift.

  As they flew toward the Redoubt, Michael had seen glimpses of Chandaka, and they had been depressing. On the outskirts of the city they were building a glittering wall that would eventually become a geodesic dome. Michael had asked the local information service what the dome was for. "There's no money for the terraforming anymore," it had told him blandly. "Chandaka is losing its artificial atmosphere." After they landed, Michael had asked their guide at the Redoubt about this. He had grimaced unhappily. "When we joined the R.E., the politicians and businessmen who grew up here became Rights Owners of the lands and industry," he said. "Now they live in luxury on Earth, and they've decided it's too expensive to keep up the terraforming. They've passed on the problem, so the city council is building the dome just so we can keep breathing. Which sucks up money, so there's even less to go to the Rights Owners." The guide made a downward spiral motion with his finger. "It's all going to hell."

  Michael knew he could return to Kimpurusha. He didn't want to find out what had happened there since he left.

  The only thing that swayed him one way or the other, was the memory of that young woman in the garden tonight. She was of the halos, hence exotic and wild. No inscape indicators hovered over her. Yet she seemed well grounded. He had liked the sound of her voice.

  Most of all, he remembered what she had said. "Sometimes, you just have to jump right back…"

  In his imagination, the alien cycler was an awesome place, full of mystery and unguessable age. Dis had been like that. Michael sometimes wondered if things had been different, if he had been more prepared at Dis, more wary.

  He couldn't go back to Dis; couldn't recover a moment that was lost. But just maybe, at Jentry's Envy, he could still try to capture and accept the infinite one more time.

  9

  "THIS WHOLE COMPLEX is amazing," said a habitat designer walking with Dr. Herat. "It looks like it was built by hand."

  Herat nodded, looking around at the vast corridor they were in. "The detailing was done by monks of the Cycler Compact."

  The designer ran a hand appreciatively over a wall carving. "It's beautiful. Intimidating. But almost… obsessive. Inward-turning, you know?"

  "Alien to us, yes. It challenges our notions of time. Maybe that was the idea."

  "Why do they call it the halo, anyway?" somebody else said. "That implies light. Those worlds are all dark."

  Herat laughed. "There's a story about that. They originally called them orphan worlds, but try to imagine encouraging people to emigrate to the orphan worlds! So they renamed them the halo worlds. Just so people would find them attractive to visit." There was a general chuckle at this.

  Admiral Crisler awaited them at the doors to what looked like a ballroom. Just inside was a short line of people: the halo-worlders.

  Dr. Herat was the first in line to greet them. He shook hands down the line, followed by the man he'd been talking to— a Dr. Katz, it seemed. Then it was Michael's turn.

  "Michael Bequith."

  "Blair Genereaux." He was surprisingly young, sharply dressed in the latest Chandaka fashion. Michael wondered if he was one of the halo-worlders or a liaison.

  "Michael Bequith."

  "Dr. Bequith, nice to meet you. I'm Corinna Chandra." She was tall, of indeterminate age, with dark, shadowed eyes and dusky skin. Her iron-gray hair was tied back and cascaded in a fan down her back. She wore a simple red jumpsuit, and the only adornment she wore was a stud in her left nostril. Her gaze was direct and businesslike.

  "Max Cassels. How ya doing?" Someone had made an attempt to dress Max well, but he wasn't having any of it. His shirt was untucked and his hair uncombed. He looked distracted.

  Was this the famous «Bud» Cassels?

  "Rebecca France, M.D." Tall and slender, with gray eyes and broad cheekbones. She seemed secretly amused by something.

  "Evan Laurel." This was the man from the garden last night; Michael recognized his voice. He was tall and blond, with lines of care around his eyes, about forty-five years old. He had the sigil of the Cycler Order on his jacket. And standing next to him…

  "Ah, yes, the man from the garden last night," she said before Michael had a chance to introduce himself. He felt his face grow hot.

  "I'm Rue," she said. Her eyes were hidden behind black pince-nez sunglasses today. "And you are…?"

  "Bequith," he stammered. "Michael Bequith."

  "Pleased to meet you, Mike." She smiled distantly.

  That was the end of the line. He stalked into the hall, still smarting.

  They'd set up a long table at one end of the hall. This place was sumptuous beyond belief— the scenes painted on the walls were neither inscap
e illusions nor copies done by mesobots. The ceiling showed scenes of planetfall and the conquest of nature here on Chandaka, with fabulous beasts and vines carved into the native stone that formed the arches. There was even design in the parquet flooring. Hot coffee and a good Martian breakfast was waiting for Michael as he sat himself.

  Once all the members of the expedition were seated, Crisler walked to the end of the table. Where he stood, his head was framed by the baroque jaws of a dragon on the far wall. He said, "Welcome everyone. This is the first assembly of our full scientific crew. There will be seventeen of us, plus the halo worlders and a support staff of forty-five on the Banshee. Today I'd like to go over the mission profile we've developed.

  "We're going to rendezvous with Jentry's Envy one point-seven light-years out from Chandaka. That's farther from an inhabited star than most of you have ever been." He smiled woodenly at the halo-worlders. "Since the Envy is receding at eight-five percent c, we can't use a conventional starship to catch up to her. If you'll check your inscape, you'll see the ship we'll be using."

  A public inscape window opened over Crisler. It showed the golden limb of some gas giant planet. Clouds swirled below.

  "Where's the ship?" asked Cassels.

  "Patience," said Crisler. "Here it comes."

  As they watched, a dark rectangle, translucent like a fine gauze, moved across the face of the planet. It resolved into a black cylinder of indeterminate size. There were some mirrored spheres at one end and a set of black rings of consecutively larger sizes appeared to be drifting behind it.

  "You can't see a lot of the Banshee," said Crisler, "because it's mostly thin spars and cable. There's sixty kilometers of line played out behind the engine you see here. It ends," the image changed, "here." This was a more familiar sight: two standard balloon habitats, joined by a V-shaped elbow at their tops. It seemed to be floating alone in space.