Permanence

by Karl Schroeder

  She ran up and grabbed Mike's arm. "I'm so sorry!" she said. "I got caught up talking cycler talk with Captain Li. I didn't mean to abandon you."

  Mike looked surprised, then pleased. "You look worn out."

  "Well, I've never danced before, have I? But I had a good teacher." She smiled at him. "I promise I'm yours for the rest of the evening."

  Herat looked over, raised an eyebrow, and turned back to his conversation.

  "Am I to understand," said Mike as she steered them toward the drinks, "that this is a date?"

  She stopped them and looked up at him, mock-serious. "Mr. Bequith, would you like to go to the ball with me?"

  He grinned and offered her his arm.

  Rue drank two tall glasses of something icy, then they went back to the others. They arrived in time to see Dr. Herat smack his forehead and say, "I don't believe it!"

  Max glanced over. "Careful, Professor, you'll break your meal ticket."

  "The autotrophs have a delegation here!" said Herat. "Bequith, this is Professor Waldt; he's met them. Can you believe it? We've been trying to talk to them for twenty years and here they are sneaking off to the halo to study us in secret."

  "It's hardly a secret to us," said the bearded man.

  "So they actually talk to you?" asked Michael.

  "Well, not directly." Waldt sipped his drink. "They use intermediaries. There's a group of radical Buddhists who've had themselves genetically engineered to be phototrophs— they're green, if you can imagine that. Lost their stomachs, sealed up their anuses and adopted the autotroph way. They're ice-blind crazy, but the autotrophs do seem to accept them. They've got this little encampment on the edge of the 'troph cavern and they seem to come and go as they please."

  "Bequith, this is too great an opportunity to pass up," said Herat.

  "I thought you were on vacation," said Mike.

  "What better place to spend it than on the shores of an autotroph oasis?"

  Max sidled over to Rue as Mike and Herat were bickering. "Something about this doesn't add up," he said.

  Rue knew Max's various tones of voice by now; he had been thinking (a quality of Good Max). This was to be encouraged. "What is it?"

  "Well, only three of Crisler's guys are here. I see Barendts and Wallace and Manduba. Where are the other two?"

  "In the washroom?"

  "No, they never showed up. And Crisler's being awfully friendly with some of those industrialists."

  "Why, Max, are you jealous of his charisma?"

  "No, I just don't understand what he's up to. And this whole party… it's out of whack. I mean, Colossus is important, true, it's one of the biggest halo worlds— but am I just being a provincial bumpkin or is there ten times as much wealth and power sloshing about this room than we'd ever see on Treya?"

  She looked through the crush of people. There were a lot of military people and many influential supporters of the Cycler Compact. "They're celebrating the discovery of the Envy."

  "I'm not asking why they're here," said Max. "I'm asking why are they here. On Oculus."

  She had no idea what he was talking about and said so.

  "All right, I'll try one more time," he said. "Did you know that there's no less than three cycler captains here tonight, not counting you?"

  "Three? That's impossible!" Most worlds couldn't expect more than ten cyclers to pass by in a single year. And their crews could never visit for more than a few weeks at a time.

  "It's true. See?" He pointed out two black uniforms she hadn't seen before. Even now, Captain Li was walking in that direction.

  "Maybe you should introduce yourself," said Max.

  "I don't think so." Li had been quite enough for one evening.

  "Well, there's something goin' on," said Max.

  "All right. You tell Mike about it; between the two of you I'm sure you can figure it out."

  * * *

  THE BANQUETING AND dancing flowed on, in long stretches of conversation, moments of laughter and delirious spells of dancing. Many hours later, things began to wind down. Couples strolled up the stone steps and disappeared. Crisler's people left in a knot, several men in suits in tow. As Rue and her crew were drifting in the direction of the exit, Travis Li approached.

  "Captain Cassels, we'd be honored if you'd attend a meeting of the Compact in two shifts' time, at one after shift-change," he said. "We'd like to talk to you about Jentry's Envy and about what it might mean to the local worlds to have a new cycler ring operating."

  "I'd be delighted," she said. "Where?"

  "Council Room Fifteen," he said. "The monks can give you directions. One after in two, then?"

  "Ah, yes. Sure."

  He walked away. Rue admired his military bearing; she wondered if she would ever walk that way.

  They went up the stairs and to the elevators. "I'm not tired yet," she said impulsively to Mike. "Want to take a walk?"

  "Sure. But where?"

  "This place has a roof. Let's find it."

  Despite the fact that they had lived in close proximity for some months now, this was the first time Rue had actually been alone with Mike Bequith. The only truly private spaces on Jentry's Envy were hostile to life. The halls of the great monastery seemed deserted, so she and Mike walked and talked, completely forgetting their surroundings or the various cares that had oppressed them.

  Eventually, after wandering a labyrinth of carpeted hallways for a quarter hour, they found an exit onto a broad balcony that looked like it might wrap around the whole building. The roof sloped up steeply above them; it was festooned with gargoyles which, in true halo tradition, looked hand-carved.

  The light was exactly the same here as when Rue had awoken. It was only night for one shift of workers; there were shutters over a third of the light wells of the city. She took off her sunglasses. "I suppose it looks dark here to you," she said.

  Mike leaned on the balustrade. "Twilight," he said. "Very strange."

  "Strange? Not beautiful?"

  "Oh, very beautiful," he said, smiling at her. "I must confess I felt very underdressed when I saw you in that uniform earlier."

  "I wanted a ball gown."

  "Maybe next time."

  There was an awkward pause. They stood very near to each other at the railing. Rue wanted to feel his hand on her back again, but what to say? He was always so polite, even distant, that she didn't know where to start with him.

  "You've got a meeting tomorrow," he said.

  "Yeah. Big time cycler captain stuff." She grinned.

  "Dr. Herat wants to visit the autotrophs tomorrow. He will expect me to go."

  "Oh… Well, I'm sure I'll be wrapped up all afternoon."

  "You know, I've hardly ever seen your eyes."

  Rue's heart started pounding. She looked up at him and bit her lip.

  "You have beautiful eyes," he said, "but I can never tell what you're thinking, because they're always hidden."

  "I'll have to make sure you see them more often," she said.

  "Well," he said with an ironic smile, "I can only think of one way for that to happen— for us to be together with the lights off."

  Why, the sly boy! She laughed. "I do believe you've just propositioned me, Mr. Bequith."

  "Maybe." He took her hand and raised it to his lips. "I guess it was the eyes. What do you say?"

  "I suppose the view will still be there tomorrow," she said and let him lead her back inside.

  19

  ICE RUSHED OVERHEAD. There were a million varieties of it— smooth and blue, white and decayed, soot-streaked, all whipping past just a few meters overhead. Michael stood on the top deck of the boat that Professor Waldt had provided and breathed deeply the scent of the ice.

  Oculus had three levels of habitation: surface cities, like Lux; 'coastal' communities, which were really just caverns melted out of the glacial ice at its interface with the ocean; and 'deep' communities, which were similar but situated elsewhere on the planet where the bottom of the
glacial continents lay kilometers below northern sea level. Luckily the autotroph settlement was not a deep community, because it would have taken them days of pressurization and acclimatization to be able to visit and days to depressurize, even with the help of their mesobots. The autotroph town was located just a few hours inland.

  The network of tunnels they were skimming through was vast and mazelike; it helped that there were signs everywhere, saying things like KOROLEV 15 KM. or DRY-DOCK SIDING, NEXT STARBOARD. There was a lot of traffic, which was one of the reasons Michael was up top: Arcs of fizzing water from passing hydrofoils regularly drenched the lower decks. Herat didn't mind, of course; he and Professor Waldt were bundled in bright yellow rain-slickers. Herat kept leaning over the rail to stare into the quickly passing water.

  The cold air was wonderful on Michael's face. More wonderful was to grip a rail that wasn't overlaid with the ghostly indicators of its ownership. Inscape was used in the halo, but sparingly. The manufactured objects here— buildings, cars, clothing— all seemed as feral and natural as the stone and ice to Michael, simply because he could see them without seeing ownership and ideology branded on them through inscape.

  Rationally he knew he was more attuned to this reality today because of his new feelings for Rue. On the other hand, his depression since Dis seemed more and more like the result of his having cut himself off from the real world. It took an extraordinary person to be able to travel to the universe's most lonely spots and remain content. Dr. Herat might be able to do it, but it had never really been the life for Michael.

  No. It wasn't that simple. The shadow of Dis was still on him and one night with Rue wasn't going to change the fact.

  For now, though, just being with Rue was enough. She had a tendency to knock his mind off its tracks, which seemed to be a good thing. That 'supreme meme' idea of hers, for instance, kept coming back to him, like a rumor: How would you have to feel… He found he was half-thinking about that a lot of the time now.

  A side-tunnel had appeared up ahead. Michael heard the engines throttle back and they began a turn toward the entrance. This tunnel was low and wide, recently rough-hewn into the turquoise wall of the main highway. Small white bergs bounced in the choppy water there and it was dark, unlike the highway which was lit by regular ceiling lamps.

  For a few seconds it looked like they were going to scrape the ceiling; Michael actually had to duck as they slid into the opening. He found himself crouched within a boundary layer of freezing air that seemed to insulate the ice. It was tempting to try to reach up and catch a piece of that ice, which must be millions of years old; but they were moving too fast. He crab-walked back to the stairs and went down.

  "Not long now," said Herat. "This was a good idea. It means we can expense this trip."

  Michael had to laugh. Herat was so completely the academic. "Well, you're in a good mood this morning," said Herat.

  He shrugged. "It's the fresh air."

  "I see. No immediate plans to leave my employ, then? — say, to take up piloting a cycler?"

  "No," said Michael curtly. He and Rue had talked for a long time after the banquet. She didn't know what she was going to do now that she had confirmed her ownership of the Envy. It was incredibly flattering to be considered a cycler captain and she felt very protective of her starship. At the same time, she longed to go home. She was in the grip of some internal conflict that she herself didn't completely understand; discussing the future simply made her unhappy right now. Since Michael didn't know himself what he was going to do after this expedition, he hadn't pressed the matter.

  Herat turned back to ask Waldt something. Searchlights at the prow of the ship lit long fans of glittering ice on the tunnel walls, but the water was black and the glacial breath of the air had penetrated down here, too, so that both men shivered.

  Michael moved nearer to the other two. "So it's not really the autotrophs we're dealing with?" Herat was asking.

  Waldt shook his head, grinning. "No. It's the garbage-pickers. But they seem to have access to autotroph technology."

  "Garbage-pickers?" asked Michael.

  "You'll see."

  "Do you really think they'll be able to translate the inscription?"

  Waldt shrugged. "Even if they don't it's hardly a wasted trip."

  Herat eyed Michael. "Linda Ophir?" he said.

  Michael shrugged. Yes, he was still trying to find out who had killed her. Herat smiled, nodding in approval.

  "Well, let's hope we get real answers from these garbage-pickers," said Herat. "The nearest human AI with a Chicxulub context is light-years away."

  Far in the distance the tunnel seemed to end in daylight. As they approached, Michael could see that the waterway ended in a collection of docks. They were lit with solar-intensity lamps and he could see several human figures waiting on the platform.

  "Ah well," said Waldt. "You'll know soon enough, it seems." He pointed.

  Michael looked over, then did a double take. Three of the men standing there were ordinary enough in appearance, though they were stocky and grim, like professional security types. The other man, though…

  He stood completely naked in the vaporous cold. His eyes seemed strange— wide and completely black— but that wasn't the strangest thing. For from toes to crown, his entire body was colored deep green.

  The green man turned his face up and seemed to match Michael's gaze. He bared his teeth, in a way that didn't even begin to suggest a smile.

  • • •

  SO HERE RUE was, sitting in a room that was higher than it was wide, at a table that looked to have been made from real trees, with three cycler captains, a minister of foreign affairs, the abbot and several ministers visiting from different halo worlds. Rue felt like she was in court, about to be judged by a jury of strangers.

  She missed her family. Just knowing Grandma or Mother were alive might have given her the courage she needed. But none of them would ever know how far she'd come, with the exception of Jentry whose opinions didn't count. Rue wanted desperately to be able to jump up and said, 'Hey, look what a Cassels woman did! But her grandmother was dead; so was Mother. There was no one to send excited messages home to.

  "We've got a lot on the agenda today," said the minister, "so I'm not going to waste any time. You've all met Captain Cassels?" There were murmurs and nods around the table. "She's arrived after a tremendous adventure," said the minister. "We've only heard bits and pieces of the story. I hope you'll tell us more before the day's out," he said to her with a smoothly political smile. "But in the meantime, we need to focus on the future of Jentry's Envy as a functioning cycler in the Compact."

  Rue nodded. She had anticipated this meeting. Li had filled her in on some of the obligations and powers of a cycler captain (including the ability to marry people) and he had shown her some surprising and exciting details about the worlds the Envy was to visit on its ring. The Envy's ring was priceless— but she knew from her own reading that cyclers had often been political and economic prizes and though the captain had final say on a cycler's course, the worlds of competing rings could tug it to and fro. The more cyclers you had passing your world, the greater your trade options, after all.

  "It's no secret that the Compact is in trouble," said the abbot. "A lot of radical schemes have been bandied about to try to solve the problem of our ever-dwindling cycler supply. Before we get started I just want to make sure that everyone at this table is clear on one thing: Permanence was established to ensure the indefinite existence of the Compact. Our people will not cooperate with any plan that dissolves the current cycler system."

  Rue saw a couple of shaking heads around the table. What possible alternative to cyclers could there be? she wondered. The abbot sat back. "Proceed," he said.

  The minister addressed Rue. "How much do we know about Jentry's Envy? Do you have her complete ring mapped?"

  "We think so," she said cautiously. She tapped out a command on the desk and a holo projection of the ring
she'd seen at the Lasa habitat appeared.

  "What we're really interested in, is her origin point," said the minister. "Which I believe you've determined."

  "Yes. It's an uninhabited halo world that's next on the Envy's course after Maenad." She pointed to a small jewel of light in the display. "Osiris and Apophis."

  There was a murmur around the table. "That's my point," said one of the visiting ministers, a short, heavy-set man named Mallory. "That's just a pair of brown dwarfs in close orbit— they have no planets. It's a well surveyed system. Your information must be wrong."

  "It may well be," said Rue quietly. "But can we afford to ignore the possibility?"

  "That's the crux of the matter," said the local minister with a nod. "You see, Captain Cassels, Mr. Mallory is from New Armstrong, which as you can see from the projection, is… here." He pointed.

  Cycler rings were not exact circles. They had to take into account the random three-dimensional distribution of stars, brown dwarfs, and drifting superplanets; Jentry's Envy followed a twisting, jagged crown-shaped course that tried to maximize the number and proximity of worlds visited while still bending back on itself to form a rough circle. Drawing a line like this in three-dimensional space made for some tough choices of which worlds to visit; sometimes two or three equally good choices existed that would all permit the cycler to complete its course.

  If all the cycler rings in this part of space were shown, Rue knew there would be dozens, with some overlaying one another and some tangential, meeting at key worlds like Colossus. Anywhere that more than a couple of rings met, commerce thrived.

  New Armstrong, Mr. Mallory's home world, lay nearly the same distance from Maenad as Osiris and Apophis— but on a course sixty degrees divergent from the existing ring.

  Mallory stood. "I submit that Apophis and Osiris can't be the origin of your cycler, because it's a planetless system— as are three of the others on your existing ring. It's true that the Envy's ring cuts through the halo in a unique way and could unite several worlds that until now have been at least two rings distant from one another. This might be desirable, but the cost is too high; there's too many useless worlds on this ring. Your cycler would spend up to ten years at a time between habitable worlds. I propose that we alter its course at Maenad and establish a new ring— like this." He overlapped Rue's holo with his own. It was at a different angle, so it took some rotation and zooming to match the two images.