Permanence

by Karl Schroeder

  "What do we do, Rue?" asked Evan. He was on the other sled.

  "Just wait a sec," she said. Rue had to keep reminding herself that Jentry was not the model for all men. She was probably overreacting. She put a call directly through to Crisler.

  He appeared in a little inscape window down near where her hands gripped the sled. "Ms. Cassels, I'm sorry for this inconvenience," he said immediately. "But we've got a situation here."

  "When I spoke to you ten minutes ago you said you had everything under control," she said.

  "Yes, well… the important thing right now is to ensure that no further damage is done. Since I don't know who caused this explosion, everyone's a suspect. I'm confining everyone to quarters and that includes your people. It's just until we can investigate properly and make sure the Banshee's safe."

  "And what about me?"

  He hesitated, for just a second. "Naturally, you'll be free to move about as you wish."

  She didn't believe him. That little hesitation said it all.

  "All right then. Cassels out." She closed the window and leaned back. Her marine was at the front of the sled, his helmet turned toward the Banshee. Behind him was Salas, then Corinna. Rue had boarded the sled last.

  They were still several minutes from the decel burn. She eased her feet out of the straps that connected her to the sled. Her heart was pounding. "I'm going to count on you guys to cooperate," she said on a public channel. "Do what you're told and answer any questions they might have. We'll get through this quicker that way. I mean, none of us did it, so we've nothing to worry about."

  She spread her arms wide and cocked her hands down. Lifting her legs from the sled slowly, she gently fired her wrist jets. For a second it felt like she was hanging onto something with both hands. Then she cut the jets and watched the sled glide away.

  "But what about Max?" blurted Evan.

  "Max throws a fit over anything that keeps him from his hammock," she said. Her mouth felt dry as she watched the two sleds converge on the habitats of the Banshee. It wasn't that she was afraid of being out here in space— this was her home. She was frightened of facing Crisler's anger.

  Well, hell, he was pushing her buttons and besides, she didn't have to justify herself to him. Really.

  Now she was getting mad at herself. Cursing, Rue flipped over and oriented herself to face Lake Flaccid. With a couple more squirts of the jets, she was headed straight for it.

  "Cassels, what are you doing?" She wasn't sure whose voice that was, but whoever it was, they were pissed.

  "I'm looking to my ship," she said. "How do we know they won't bomb that, too?" Then she switched off the radio.

  This ought to start 'em guessing.

  It was with a feeling of déjà vu that she found herself grabbing the cable outside the lake's airlock and hauling herself in. Last time it had been her brother chasing her. This time it would be marines— they'd be sure to have turned the sleds around, or launched more by now.

  Wryly, she thought, who's it going to be next time? The Lasa?

  Rue flipped her way through the airlock and dove for the strap gallery. They'd shut off the lights here, so she used her helmet spot to navigate. This was dangerously fun, actually— nothing better than thumbing your nose at authority. The only thing that made her feel guilty was the fact that she had a crew to look after. They'd be feeling pretty bewildered right about now.

  But, as Jentry often said, "always negotiate from a position of strength." If she was locked up aboard the Banshee, she'd have no way to influence the outcome of Crisler's investigation. Especially if he, say, rigged the explosion himself as a pretext for taking control of the whole cycler.

  Not that she believed this, she thought as she launched herself across the length of the axis cylinder. She was just a paranoid yokel from the Stations. Well, maybe. But she would still negotiate from strength.

  They'd catch up to her pretty fast. Even now they might be at the airlock. Rue reached the far shore of Lake Flaccid and found the corresponding strap palace there. As they'd discovered, the axis of the lake was indeed symmetrical, with two shores, two strap palaces, and two airlocks.

  A minute later, she was outside again, perched on the hull of the lake and out of sight of the Banshee.

  There was no handhold here and no light except from the stars. That was plenty of light for Rue, who spotted what she was looking for almost immediately. She sailed over to the cluster of rings and little robot arms that held onto one end of a thin white cord. This cord rose slackly into the night, spiralling away to infinity.

  Rue had seen the radar maps of the cycler habitats. They were all still connected to the plow sail by cables and not much slack had entered the system since the last turn.

  She clipped herself to the cord and kicked off from the Lake. As she rose she gave herself a few tugs on the line to speed herself up, then used a third of her remaining jet pressure to accelerate some more.

  The jets had accelerated her to about 150 kilometers per hour. She concentrated on trying to keep the cord from touching the ring of the clip; it rattled when it did so and would reduce her speed. Too much of that would be bad: She had a thousand kilometers more to go today. So she unclipped it, played out a little of her own grappling cable, made a much bigger loop and put that around the cord. As long as she wasn't going to drift away, she'd be all right.

  It would take at least six hours for her to get to the plow sail. She had almost a day's worth of air and power in the suit, so that wasn't a worry. But she fretted, wondering what was going on back at the Banshee, while the gray line of the tether stretching out ahead of her wavered and swung as it passed through her loop.

  * * *

  RUE FELL ASLEEP despite her best efforts. She had an inscape window open next to the wavering cord and had reviewed her suit's recording of the trip to the lake. Then she put on some music she'd downloaded into the suit months ago and sang along with it. She ran through all that too and ended up staring at the long line as it zipped by her, until she was hypnotized and finally, dozing.

  She came to with the impression that something was wrong and had no idea where she was for a few seconds. She saw only stars, heard herself breathing in the suit and reached out reflexively.

  Her glove found the cord and clutched it before she realized what she was doing. She let go immediately, but not before she realized what was wrong: She had stopped moving.

  Rue looked behind herself. The cord seemed to coil up back there; she must have hit a really slack part or a long curve, which had pulled on the loop of belt line until it braked her to a stop.

  Great. She checked the time: She'd been asleep for three hours. Rue knew she had passed the halfway point before falling asleep, but beyond that, who knew? There was no way to tell where she was; the plow sail might be two hundred kilometers away or only five.

  For a few seconds she just hung there, discouraged and cursing herself for a fool. What was she doing out here, anyway?

  She would have to boost up to speed again. That meant losing more propellant. She'd be dangerously low when she finally got to the sail. But it was too late to turn around and go home.

  The alternative was to pull herself along, which would be slower, but wouldn't waste any fuel.

  Rue compromised, by hauling herself along the cord until she was going as fast as she could, then giving herself a little boost with the jets. Once she was going again, she checked her instruments.

  Hmm. The magnetometer was going crazy and the Geiger counter readings were rising fast…

  Something black had blocked out the stars ahead of her. It expanded quickly until it filled her vision.

  "Crap!" She grabbed the cord with both hands; it scraped her gloves, yanking her to a stop just meters from the terminus of the cord. Rue found herself perched on the end of a long, insectile arm that curved away toward a gigantic black object. She hung on for a few minutes while she stopped cursing and her heart rate slowed. When her faceplate had unfogg
ed, she took a careful look around.

  The plow sail was like a huge black spider, cylindrical of body, with at least a dozen long legs fanning out from its open end. Each arm ended in a spinnerette that held a delicate thread. The threads trailed away to infinity behind or below, depending on how she wanted to look at it.

  Everything was perfectly still against the stars. The monstrous shape made Rue decidedly uneasy— it looked like it was frozen in midconvulsion and might at any second thrash those giant legs and draw her into its mouth.

  The eeriness of it made her remember Dr. Herat's story about Dis. For a moment she could vividly picture the place— the dead roads and buildings black under the stars, a weightless cityscape where bodies frozen for three billion years still drifted through the rooms like ghosts, or embodiments of despair.

  She tore her gaze away from the plow sail and opened an inscape window. In it, she issued the call to awaken the cache.

  When they came to Jentry's Envy the first time, they had not done so in just one shuttle. Max had insisted that they fit two for the journey, the second being redundant and packed with extra supplies. It was horrendously expensive and nothing had gone wrong to warrant using it, but every day that they spent out here Rue had been thankful for its presence. When they rode the beam in to Chandaka they had left it behind, to further guarantee their safety upon their return. And Rue had instructed that no one should mention its existence on Chandaka.

  She found it after a minute's searching; it had lit up as per her instructions and now appeared like a dim pearl in the night. Rue unclipped herself from the cord that connected her to the plow sail and Lake Flaccid and jetted out to meet it.

  Ten minutes later she floated before a console in the cache, orienting an inscape camera so that it showed the wealth of netted food bags and equipment behind her. The picture was lined up perfectly, but she still hesitated a long moment before pinging Crisler. Her head hurt and she had to talk to herself for a few minutes to get her voice to stop shaking.

  When she called he responded instantly. "So," he said. "Where are you?"

  "I know how it looks," she said, "and that can't be helped. But I'm not your bomber. In fact, I think I can help."

  He arched an eyebrow disdainfully. "My life support blows out, you disappear and the next morning there you are in what looks like…" he peered past her, "a treasure trove. What should I think about it?"

  "This is our local cache of supplies."

  "Supplies? You never told us about any cache," he said.

  "Why should I have?" she said, her face hot. "The Envy is my ship; it's under the jurisdiction of the halo worlds. You are visitors."

  "And now that you no longer need us, you're sending us packing back to the R.E." He said with an angry nod. "I see."

  "No, you don't," she said. "Why would we blow up your life support? We need it, too."

  "Do you? Not according to what I see behind you. Plus which, how many other caches have you got stashed around the Envy?"

  "Oh yeah," she said with a laugh. "We could have lifted thousands of tonnes of stuff out of Erythrion, right? Infinite amounts. Get real, admiral. We came out here the first time with two balloons full of stuff and we flew into Chandaka with one of them. Do the calculations yourself— it was the best we could do with the energy budget we had. Would you have brought all your material back down from near-c if you were me? And would you have told people that you'd left stuff there? Think about it."

  "I've been thinking about it," he said darkly.

  "Then you know it doesn't add up," she said. "Why would we blow up the Banshee's life support while most of us were aboard it, if we wanted to scuttle you and send you home? If that were the plan, all my crew would be aboard the cache with me."

  "Bad timing?" he said.

  "We'd have to be idiots to be even getting ready to do something like that right now— we just got here! If we were going to do it, we would have waited a week or two until we were thoroughly camped out somewhere, say in those rooms Mike found in the lake. And you know perfectly well that all I'm after here is proof that the Envy is going to return to Erythrion at the end of her cycle. We don't have that proof and I don't know how to get it— so we still need you and your scientific team."

  "So why did you cut and run, then?"

  "You were going to lock me up, weren't you?"

  He met her eyes. "No, Rue. I gave you my word and I would have kept it. Do you distrust me that much?"

  "I… I had to imagine the worst," she said. "If the saboteur's smart, he'd make it look like we did it. And while we were cooling our heels in your brig, you guys might have found the cache on your own and that would just clinch it then, wouldn't it?"

  "So? You're still out there with it. But I have your crew."

  Rue made a face and waved a hand at Crisler. "Oh, stop it. Like I said, you wouldn't have my crew if it really had been us who did this. Look, Admiral, nobody wants this mission to succeed more than me. My future depends on it. For that reason, I'm bringing the cache back. We can try to rebuild the life-support stacks with my supplies."

  Crisler scowled. "In exchange for…?"

  "Nothing! Don't you get it yet? This isn't a negotiation, Crisler. I'm giving you the cache. As a gesture of good faith and to prove that I'm not your bomber."

  The admiral's scowl gradually subsided into a frown. "Okay," he said finally. "We might be able to get back on-line with the material you've got there. Then what? I still have a saboteur to deal with."

  "It's somebody who doesn't want the expedition to succeed," she said. "Or somebody who desperately wants to get back to Chandaka with news about what we've found here. Which is more likely."

  He nodded. "I'd been thinking along those lines myself. Your disappearance threw me— because you're right, it doesn't make sense that it was you. But…"

  "What?"

  He was scowling again. "We're still in danger. Look, Rue, I'll let your people out and meet you in the boardroom when you arrive. We've got to work out a strategy to deal with this— either find the saboteur or neutralize his effectiveness."

  "I'd rather talk about everything in the open— everybody present, no secrets," she said.

  He shrugged. "If you want."

  "Okay. The cache is pretty unwieldy. I'll be a day or two in getting there."

  "We'll send some sleds on ahead to get the critical gear," he said. "Otherwise, we're going to run out of air before you get here."

  "All right. Are we done?"

  "Yes. And Rue… I'm sorry for my presumption of guilt on your part. Thanks."

  "You're welcome." She cut the connection, and felt herself slump in relief. She hadn't been crazy to act this way; that was something to remember.

  So was the fact that Crisler could be dealt with. Humming, Rue turned to the task of reviving the rest of the cache's systems.

  * * *

  MICHAEL HAD WATCHED as Crisler talked to someone through inscape, but he couldn't hear the dialogue or see the other person. That damnable military inscape was clouding his senses again. Finally Crisler's lips finished moving, he turned, and Michael found he could hear again.

  "I suppose you know why you are here?" said Crisler. He had an expression of distaste on his face, as though Michael's mere presence offended him.

  "Yes, I've written up a full report about my discovery in Lake Flaccid—"

  "That's not what I mean." Crisler smiled grimly, and Michael felt his confidence evaporate. He had just spent the last few hours locked up with Rue's crew— with no explanations or apologies from the marines who guarded them. He had assumed some kind of overall quarantine was in effect.

  There were other reasons why Crisler might take an interest in him, though.

  The admiral was waiting. Michael cleared his throat. "Are you presuming some… involvement on my part in this explosion?"

  "Bombing," said Crisler. "It was a bombing. We found traces of a chemical explosive."

  "But why assume one of o
ur people? I hate to say it, but the halo-worlders have the best reason for wanting us gone—"

  Crisler shook his head. "The explosive was tagged."

  "Tagged? What do you mean?"

  "Everything's tagged," said Crisler. "From tables to starships. The tags are molecular-scale. It's impossible to get them out of a manufactured object without destroying that object. This bomb had tags, ergo it came from the R.E. and not the halo."

  "The rebels."

  "A rebel." Crisler leaned over his desk. "Maybe this rebel."

  Michael's past was far behind him, but he still shifted uncomfortably under Crisler's gaze. "I had a brief flirtation with the rebels when I was a kid," he said. "So did a lot of people."

  "Maybe. But you have also maintained illegal religious activities ever since." Michael must have reacted, because Crisler laughed. "Yes, we knew about your NeoShinto activities all along. Tolerated them, because you were useful. But you must admit it looks bad for you: a known connection with the rebels; current membership in a secret order that seeks to undermine the R.E. through religious proselytizing."

  Michael's defensiveness gave way to anger. "I'm just continuing an old tradition, a tradition of my homeworld. A tradition your people destroyed."

  "My people? Interesting turn of phrase." Crisler sat back, steepling his hands. "Of course, I don't have any proof it was you. Just supposition. But one slip-up this far into deep space, and we're all dead. So I can't afford to take any chances."

  "What are you going to do? Put me into cold sleep for the remainder of the trip?"

  "I actually thought of doing that. But Professor Herat has told me that he'll go on strike if you're put down. Anyway, I don't need to lock you up. Not if you wear this." Crisler tossed something small across the table. Michael picked it up.

  It was a little earclip, with a beadlike lens on it. "Wear that at all times," said Crisler. "We'll be monitoring you through it. Take it off, and we'll find you and shoot you. That is all."

  Michael's face burned with fury and shame. He fumbled to clip the damnable monitor to his ear, then stood.