Permanence

by Karl Schroeder

  He had just put his hand on the door switch when Crisler said, "Oh, I nearly forgot!" Michael turned.

  The admiral waved a hand and an inscape window appeared above the desk. "Have you ever seen this man before?"

  Michael glanced at the picture, then looked again. He put his hands behind him to hide a sudden tremble. With difficulty, he kept his voice steady as he said, "No."

  "Hmm. Too bad. And quite surprising, given that this man Jason Errend was the rebel leader who headed the failed insurrection on Kimpurusha. We thought he'd changed his allegiance, and we trusted him for a while. Now he's disappeared again. Think about it, Bequith. If some memory comes to you of this man, please don't hesitate to come see me. My door's always open." Crisler smiled pleasantly, as though they'd been making lunch plans.

  Michael lurched out the door, thoughts and emotions whirling in confusion. He couldn't help but feel the weight of the little traitor on his earlobe; it made him want to avoid meeting the gazes of the people he passed.

  It was all too much to take in— particularly the shock of seeing Errend's face again, after all these years. Michael had always believed Errend had betrayed the resistance— had turned in his fellows on Kimpurusha. Michael included. Yet Crisler said he was still an active rebel leader.

  Michael had trusted Errend, and the trauma of betrayal had driven him into the arms of the NeoShinto brothers.

  Had he been wrong?

  He went directly to his stateroom, but when he entered he saw that someone had been here. His Mark 820 datapack, in which he had stored illicit kami during his travels with Herat, lay on the bed. It was an open invitation for him to pick it up and access it. He knew that if he did, someone would be watching through the clip on his ear. They would see if he discovered the pack had been wiped clean of its illegal contents. They would see the kami if he accessed the pack to see if the files were still there.

  He sat and stared at the black case— unable to pick it up, unable to ignore it.

  He did not leave his stateroom for the remainder of the day.

  * * *

  RUE ARRIVED BACK at the Banshee the next morning, and Crisler immediately called a general assembly in the ship's round gymnasium. The science team was there, and Rue brought her people— all except for Max, who couldn't be bothered to move today, damn him. The small space barely held everyone; Rue ended up perched atop a piece of exercise equipment.

  "The news is pretty grim," the admiral said as soon as the last stragglers arrived. "We have enough oxygen and food to maybe keep everybody going for a few days. If Dr. Bequith's discovery pans out, we may have resources we can use on the Envy." Rue smiled at Bequith, but he stood with his head down, eyes fixed resolutely on the floor. Odd.

  Dr. Katz nodded vigorously. "We could put excess personnel in cold sleep after we find out how well we're supplied."

  "Then what?" asked Crisler. "We can't complete the surveys here if we're understaffed."

  Rue stood up on her bench. "But we're in the halo now. If we can get enough food stacks going to keep at least a skeleton crew alive for a few months, we can drop a rendezvous ship on the Colossus beam. We buy some new stacks from Colossus and we're back in business."

  Crisler scratched his chin. "Can we do that? We'll be passing Colossus at near light-speed. If we stopped there, the Envy would be… maybe years away before we got back to it."

  "There are ways," she said. "It takes a dangerously high-g arrival and departure. You only get a few days of stopover before you have to leave. Then you have to accelerate to a higher velocity than the cycler just to catch up, then slam on a braking magsail and match speeds. It's punishing and expensive, but my people have being doing it for centuries."

  "It might just work. The alternative is to return to Chandaka for supplies and that'll cost us a good year— though if your skeleton crew turns out to be too small, R— Captain Cassels, then we don't gain anything, do we? If we can't explore the rest of the Envy in the meantime…"

  "Well, let's work out our minimums," she said. She knew they were surrounded by uncertainties, but it wasn't the first time for her. They had to stay focused on the critical issues or let the whole expedition collapse.

  "This scheme of visiting Colossus seems highly risky," said Katz. "What have we got to buy new stacks with at Colossus? These things don't come cheap."

  Rue had thought of that. "We can sell our preliminary findings, or passage on the Envy to its next stop, if the passengers bring their own stacks."

  "Unacceptable," said Crisler. "I don't want information about the Envy getting out."

  "Oh, come on! Colossus is two light-years from the nearest lit world. Even if your precious rebels heard about what we've got, it would take them years to find out about it!"

  "Nevertheless," said Crisler. "And two years isn't that long."

  "All right," she said. Her hand strayed to her throat. "I do have a… negotiable item independent of the Envy that I can sell. I'm sure we can get the stacks and more with it." She carefully ignored the looks of surprise that passed over her crew's faces at this revelation.

  "So are we going to fly the Banshee into the Colossus system?" asked Katz.

  Rue shook her head. "No, that would take too much energy and time. We send a small group, and they ride the beam in— just like we did at Chandaka."

  "That sounds suicidal," sputtered Katz. "Admiral, are we really going to rely on this— sorry, Rue— primitive cycler technology?" She glared at him.

  "Rue's right," said Professor Herat. "Why interrupt our investigation of the Envy by shipping out in the Banshee? For that matter, if Rue's negotiable item is information, we could sell it and order the stacks without having to leave the Envy at all. Isn't that right, Rue?"

  She nodded. "Dr. Katz, the Cycler Compact has functioned for centuries. It's far from primitive. They would have to honor an agreement like that. Unfortunately, my item can't be radioed on ahead. I'll have to sell it in person."

  "All right," said Crisler, "so we have the beginnings of a plan. Now, assuming we use the supplies that Captain Cassels has graciously donated, we can survive until we reach Colossus if we put… how many people?"

  "Forty," said Katz, rather quietly.

  "…Forty people into cold sleep."

  This news did not go over well. Rue watched the scientists eye one another, and tighten into small groups, muttering. "I know," said Crisler, one hand raised, "forty of sixty-eight people is a huge hit. We have our unknown saboteur to thank for the situation and we'll just have to make the best of it. If Rue is right that we can pick up supplies at Colossus according to time-honored cycler tradition, then we revive everyone afterward. This means that we are committed to the full year-and-a-half exploratory mission, but considering what we've discovered in just scratching the surface here, I don't think that'll be a problem. We'll disembark at Maenad and return to the R.E. with our results. Comments, anyone?"

  "Well, yeah," said a young chemist named Hutcheons. "Who's going into the tanks?"

  "We want to maximize the science presence, obviously, but we can't completely eliminate the support team," said the admiral. "We can't ask Captain Cassels to spare any of her people, so a reasonable cut would be twenty of my people, mostly on the military side, except for a squad that will guard the tanks and other essential equipment from further sabotage. Twelve of the support staff leaves eight to be cut from the science team. Dr. Herat will have to decide on who he needs the most."

  Hutcheons shook his head vigorously. "That's not fair. We all know Herat will keep the priest awake no matter what. Somebody's going to get put down in his place."

  There was more muttering. The priest? Rue looked around at the crowd. Then she noticed Michael Bequith standing to one side, eyes still fixed on the ground. Other members of the science team were looking at him too.

  "Oh, stop whining," Herat said. "You're only going to miss the initial exploratory phase— something Bequith has years of experience with. The real work comes l
ater anyway, you know that."

  Herat walked to the front and turned to fix his team with a determined look. "You all know I seriously object to tampering with alien archaeological treasures, but as Admiral Crisler keeps pointing out, this is a survival issue. We're going to have to search the Envy for usable supplies. One thing we can say is that oxygen is oxygen and we're not going to learn anything from the gas stored in the tanks we've seen attached to some of the Envy's habitats. We can harvest that gas if it's not being used by the habitats themselves. Now, we will learn from the tanks, damn it, so I don't want them busted, drilled, reamed out or painted! We need isotopic and engineering studies of them.

  "Doubtless we could find a lot more supplies if we ransacked the place, but if we do that then we make a joke of the scientific expedition. So we will proceed slowly and systematically. Is everyone clear on that?"

  There was no more grumbling. After a moment, Herat nodded sharply and said, "It's important to know what progress we've made in the little time we've been here. Dr. Katz, could you present our findings from the habitat Rue's people so colorfully call 'Lake Flaccid'?"

  Katz was taken a bit by surprise. To cover himself, he began summoning inscape windows, until they surrounded his head like a cloud of playing cards. He glanced at these and cleared his throat.

  "Well, the main finding is, of course, that Jentry's Envy really is a multispecies starship. This has profound implications; it could revive the project at Olympus and the political impact is going to be huge.

  "Even so, this raises more questions than it answers. If there really are at least two species involved in creating Jentry's Envy, where are they? All the stars within twenty light-years are either inhabited by humans, or empty of useful planets.

  "Secondly, we've completed isotopic analysis of Lake Flaccid and, by laser, on two other structures. The isotopic distribution matches several stars in the local stellar group. Most important, the hull of Lake Flaccid contains a record of its age: There's a steady rain of cosmic rays on the Envy and from the number of tracks in the hull metal you can directly calculate how long the ship's been travelling at this velocity.

  "The answer is exactly forty-seven years." Katz waited while the now excited buzz of conversation died down. "If there is no FTL drive on this ship, then it's impossible for the Envy to have come from more than about forty light-years away. If it's a true cycler it's travelling in a rough circle and will eventually return to its starting point. We think that starting point is less than twelve light-years from here.

  "If that truly is the case, then we have a paradox, since this whole volume of space is well known. At this point… I'd welcome any ideas," he ended weakly.

  The scientists proceeded to get into a roaring debate. Crisler stood back, arms folded, and watched with satisfaction. Rue took the opportunity to edge in the direction of Mike Bequith, who was standing aloof; apparently no one would talk to him. Some kind of revelation had occurred concerning him, and Rue had to know what it was.

  After letting the argument go on for a while, Katz raised a hand and said, "People, please! We can talk till we exhaust the stacks, but it won't get us anywhere. The evidence is there to be collected, if we just go look. I suggest that our next stop be the habitat that has the Lasa writing on it."

  This touched off even more debate, but Rue had reached Mike now. "I wanted to thank you again for your discovery yesterday," she said. "I thought we'd lost you, and I apologize for getting you into that situation to begin with."

  Mike appeared surprised. "It's… my job," he said, his voice a bit husky. "But thanks."

  "I wanted you to know that you've served my ship and crew well," she said. "Now tell me, what was all that about?" She nodded in the direction of the arguing scientists.

  Mike squinted at the wall for a few seconds. "I'm a suspect in the bombing," he said. "The only suspect, it seems."

  "What? Why?" Then she remembered her first impression of Mike: He had been eavesdropping on her conversation with Evan in the gardens at Chandaka. She'd thought that impolite at the time, but not sinister. Now, though…

  He grimaced. "I was briefly involved with the resistance, years ago. It was the kind of foolish thing you do when you're young. But it seems there's no outliving your mistakes."

  "Hmm." She decided not to judge that, now— it might pay to be more cautious around Michael Bequith in the future; on the other hand, he had been nothing but charming and helpful during the expedition, so far. "Why are they calling you 'the priest'?"

  "Because Crisler's told everyone that I practice a banned religion," he said.

  Well, that at least was not a total surprise. "NeoShinto. You told me about it, so I looked it up. It's banned in the Rights Economy, but not in the halo. If you can't practice your religion in peace and quiet on the Banshee, all you need do is visit the Envy. Remember that."

  He stammered his thanks. The meeting was breaking up, so Rue took her leave of Mike.

  He might be the threat Crisler was searching for, or he might be innocent. Either way, by offering him a haven Rue had hopefully made him less of a threat to her own people.

  Besides, he was kind of cute.

  14

  "STERLING ACCOMMODATIONS," SAID Dr. Katz. "But I'm sure we'll get used to them."

  "Thanks for the support, Henry," said Laurent Herat. They were watching some of Crisler's marines unload boxes into one of the more capacious chambers of the Lake Flaccid warren. They had figured out how to unclip the sheets that were wadded into the rooms and here had packed them into a corner, leaving uprights standing like too-thin pillars everywhere. Two members of the scientific team sat in the corner, suits off, reading about partial pressures and trying to program their scrubber implants to handle the local air. There were public inscape windows everywhere, full of equations, photos, and journal articles and one or two hovering models of life-support equipment that the techs were using as schematics. You walked through them like clouds.

  Michael Bequith was depressed. He had been struggling against admitting it to himself, but the strain of Crisler's accusations and the revelations about his past that had followed the explosion had mired him down. It didn't help, today, that Katz was in such a good mood.

  "It'll be fun," said the habitat specialist. "We've gotten way too soft, let our machines do all the work for us. You know, when I was young I used to design habitats from scratch with big constraints on them— not enough air, or no free water supply. The more these halo-worlders tell me about their lives, the more I think I should have been born out here."

  Herat laughed. "You're one of a kind, Henry."

  It continually astonished Michael how men like Katz and Herat could completely fail to notice their environment. They crouched now in a long, rectangular chamber, a meter and a half high, its perimeter stacked with boxes. Fine: But every time Michael really looked at his surroundings, his breath caught. This was what Rue Cassels called "the creeps" and over years spent with Dr. Herat, Michael had learned what caused it. It was the sensation you got when the wind took an inanimate object, say, a shirt and for a moment made it flap its arms and reach for you. It was the sensation he'd had on their one visit to Earth, when he had stood at Stonehenge and found that the stones looked simultaneously natural and artificial; his mind couldn't reconcile the two.

  This place was deliberately designed and yet no human person had ever stood here. Human instinct reacted just as though these walls had fitted themselves and the lights assembled from nothing and lit on their own. In a sense they had; an independent inhuman part of the universe had created Jentry's Envy and perceiving this, the part of the human mind that once saw spirits in stones awoke.

  "No, don't put that there, we're going to partition that corner for the toilet," Katz shouted. "These jarheads," he muttered. "We're well rid of them. Told one to put up some numbers on the doorways and he just slapped numbers and letters up randomly. Just not thinking."

  Two marines shuffled the boxes over to where
Michael was standing. "Excuse me, Father," said one; they both laughed and one or two of the scientists hid smiles.

  Everybody knew about Michael's NeoShinto activities. Apparently, he was a joke now.

  "Ah," said Katz. "Here, look at this. Team B is inside the Hive."

  He waved to a large inscape window; several members of the science team were clustered around it, including Dr. Herat, who would obviously have preferred to have been at the Hive than here. The image showed a gray oval blob; Michael couldn't make head or tail of it until a space-suited figure crawled into view, providing scale. The image shook and moved and the blob took on dimension: It was a sort of oblong chamber. The chamber was a little more than a meter high and twice that long, more like the inside of a large cocoon than a room.

  "Captain Cassels told us that they'd visited only one other habitat before reaching Chandaka," Katz said. "That was the Hive. They didn't take any photos because, as she so eloquently put it, they 'freaked. I can see why."

  The camera moved through a narrow slit in the papery end of the cocoon and emerged into another identical space.

  "That's the fifteenth of these in a row," somebody said. Michael could hear a faint chatter of voices coming from the window, including Rue Cassels's.

  "No, left, left!" said Herat. "Ach, idiot, wait, I'm coming over."

  "We're not waiting for you," said Rue. "You have to give us some autonomy, Professor."

  She and Herat proceeded to descend into an argument over procedure. Rather than get drawn into that, Michael left the room through its wide door (labeled with a big sticky "I") and looked for the steep ramp he had first come up when he'd found these chambers. Maybe the feelings this place awoke in him had always been illusions, creations of his own that he used to fill a void in his life. Maybe this really was just a thing, magnesium alloy and aerogel filling, no more or less significant than any rock. It had been created by blind evolutionary fate, as had he; he wasn't going anywhere but where his genes led him; nor was the human race going anywhere. Herat had proven that— they were at the top of the evolutionary arc, with nowhere to go now but down. So all this investigation was futile. You could already see the seeds of decay in the inequities of the R.E. itself.