Permanence

by Karl Schroeder

  "What's happening?" asked Michael. There was nothing visible below them except darkness. Above, ice moved past at what looked like a walking pace. Some of the long threadlike things he'd seen earlier were passing by; they seemed to be undulating under their own power.

  "We're caught in a current," said Herat. "It's probably one of the thermals that circulates between the exposed ocean and the far side of the planet. The sub's working fine and has plenty of power and life support left. We just don't have control."

  "So we're headed for the coldest spot on Oculus," said Michael.

  "It's not as bad as it seems," said Herat. The laser burn on his arm seemed to be healing; he was alert and in no apparent pain. "Remember, there are cities down here. At places where the glacial ice is thinner— higher above us— there's giant caverns, much bigger than the autotroph compound. With luck we'll drift past one of those."

  "And then what?"

  Barendts laughed. "Professor Herat spotted something we'd overlooked." He pointed through the diamond window.

  Michael could dimly make out some of the sub's manipulator arms. They were mostly out of sight below his feet and were silhouetted by the floodlamps in front of them. One arm appeared to be holding something.

  "See it?" asked Herat. "No? Well, it took us a while to figure it out ourselves, but one of those arms snagged the strap of Barendts's laser rifle after he dropped it jumping onto the sub. See it now?"

  Now that he knew what he was looking for, Michael could plainly see the shape of the weapon, dangling from one of the larger arms. "What good does that do us?" he asked.

  "I'm not sure, but no doubt an opportunity will present itself."

  He was too tired to indulge Herat's usual optimism, so he turned back to Rue. "How are you doing?" he asked her gently.

  She looked down at him again; she seemed very far away. "I'm good," she said, almost inaudibly.

  "You don't look good," he said. She seemed stunned. "Did you take something from the medkit?"

  Rue smiled sadly. "No." She stood up, a bit stiffly. Michael had to stand and back up to give her space. "Professor, do sit down," she said.

  "Thanks." He plonked himself into the seat she'd vacated and Rue stretched, then went to sit on the edge of one of the cots. Michael sat opposite her.

  "I've been thinking," she said listlessly. "I've been very stupid."

  "What do you mean? You can't blame yourself for Max's death," he said, reaching out to take her hand.

  "It's not that— I mean, I was, I was blaming myself. It's so awful, what happened." She wiped tears away from her eyes with a fist, then opened her fingers to reveal the pendant. "And I was blaming myself. Until… Mike, I met your kami. They told me to stop blaming myself."

  Met the kami? The statement was so totally unexpected that for a moment Michael couldn't make sense of it. "How… how did you…"

  Rue looked down, seemingly embarrassed. "I went to the local NeoShinto… temple, or whatever, before we met at the docks. They gave me a headset and, uh, while you were sleeping, I borrowed your datapack."

  She shrugged awkwardly. "I needed to do something, to take my mind off Max. And I was hurting so much. But I met the kami and I feel… different, now."

  He held her hand tightly and fixed his eyes on hers. "Which kami?" he demanded.

  "All of them," she said, "but especially the ones from Dis."

  Michael felt like someone had punched him in the stomach. He sagged back against the cold wall of the sub. He should have erased that kami long ago. Just thinking about it brought back the sense of hollow emptiness to him. "Oh, Rue," he said. "I'm so sorry."

  She chewed on her lip, absently brushing her hair back from her eyes. "Yes, well, I know you would never have pushed me to meet them. You were good that way."

  To have lost her cousin and then to have faced the soul-destroying kami of Dis… He was amazed Rue could still function. "I'm sorry," he croaked again.

  Now she looked puzzled. "What? Why? I was falling apart, Mike. I miss Max so much and I was blaming myself for his death. Everything looked so dark and pointless, I could have died. Your kami saved me."

  "What?"

  She nodded. "I saw Dis. It's such a cold and lonely place. But when the kami appeared, I–I disappeared! I became the universe itself, staring down at this one little place in the cosmos. I turned away and Dis disappeared, Rue was gone, and there was only the stars. And, at that moment, I was ancient, so ancient, Mike! Older than humanity, or even this little fellow." She smiled fondly at the galaxy-shaped ediacaran. "All the cares and responsibilities of Rue Cassels seemed infinitely small. And Max… well, he was a part of me then. Max was a part of the universe, a part I loved. I'll mourn and always miss him, but it would just be so self-absorbed of me to blame myself."

  Michael started to speak, stopped and finally said, "The kami of Dis showed you that?"

  "I've been going like crazy since I left Allemagne," she said quietly. "I couldn't explain why before. Now I know I was running away, all that time. Even going after the Envy, I was running away from having to face myself. I was eager to panic about Crisler, you know to go from crisis to crisis because that meant I could make other people, or just the situation, responsible for what I was doing. Now that I see it, I'm not going to let myself get away with it anymore."

  "Rue, you're being unfair to yourself," he said. "You've been a voice of reason all through this expedition. You found out how to control the Envy! You've taken good care of your crew. I think you've acted responsibly all along."

  She grimaced. "I did okay. But it was all reacting. Max was the one who planned things. I just went along for the ride. Not anymore, though. Crisler's killed Max. He and that bastard Mallory have a lot to answer for. I'm going to stop them, Mike." Her gaze was level and serious now; the pendant was forgotten in her hand. "We're going to bring them down."

  Michael stared at her. This Rue was a person he had never seen before. She had always shown hints of iron strength, in her determination and unwavering focus on her goals. She had been charismatic, before. Now, she seemed unstoppably sure of herself.

  She hung the pendant around her neck. "We need to plan what we'll do when we get back," she said. "You're good at politics. Who do you see as the most influential people in the Compact now?"

  He started to protest— she must need his comfort, he was sure of it. No one could have faced the kami of Dis and come out intact. And yet it seemed she had.

  Seeing her calm alertness, all sense of shock and fear gone, the words died on his lips. He had thought he knew the mind behind her face; now he had to admit he didn't understand her at all. Even if she was wearing a mask over her emotions, it was seamless. She had work to do, it seemed, and nothing was going to dissuade her from it— not even the kami of Dis.

  He knew of no way to respond other than to accept the mask for what it appeared to be.

  Michael took a deep breath. "First of all," he said, "you need to tell me how your meeting went yesterday afternoon…"

  22

  ALL THE BAD feelings remained: guilt, grief, a sense of horror at how senselessly life could end. Rue would not let them prevent her from acting, now or ever again.

  The others were not so easily entertained. Rue knew her responsibilities, so she convened strategy sessions with Mike and Barendts. At the first one she started off by saying, "How was Crisler going to explain our deaths? Or were we to disappear?"

  "Disappear," said Barendts. "I don't know how he was going to explain it."

  "He wouldn't," said Mike. "If none of you were seen and if the inscape spoofing worked, there would be no evidence to point at him."

  "Rebecca would finger him," Rue pointed out.

  "Maybe, but would she be heard? And what proof would she have? I think Crisler's working with some of the pro-R.E. factions here. They would lend support," said Mike. "What they would do is put a spin on the whole event— blame it on some rival faction, produce a patsy even."

 
"So we'll nail him as soon as we get back," said Rue. "After all, we have the proof." She nodded at Barendts.

  Michael sat back, shaking his head. "Except that the assassination didn't go off as he'd planned. He knows Barendts botched the inscape spoofing. If that was detected, suspicion will point straight at Crisler, because the R.E. military has the most sophisticated inscape technology. Hell, he might have been arrested already. Even if he hasn't been, he can't be sure we're dead, unless the other marines lied about what they saw when the sub sank."

  Barendts shook his head. "They wouldn't lie. It's their necks on the line too."

  "So he's on the hotseat," said Mike. "What's the best thing he could do now?"

  "Retreat to the Envy," said Rue bitterly.

  "Yes. He'll probably take your man Mallory with him. The deal would be Mallory helps Crisler out here on Oculus and in return Crisler publicly pledges the R.E.'s support for the plan to integrate the halo with the R.E. In your absence, Mallory takes command of the Envy and when they get there Crisler lets Mallory take the Envy away to form the new cycler ring he's been wanting. Meanwhile Crisler himself takes the Banshee and heads for the Twins."

  Rue cursed. It made an awful kind of sense. The worst part was, trapped as they were, there was nothing she could do about it.

  Well, that might be true. But she'd be damned if she would let herself be bullied anymore.

  "We need to plan our response," she said. "How are we going to head Crisler off, assuming we get out of here?"

  Mike and Barendts glanced at one another; she saw a faint smile hover around the marine's lips for an instant. Then they leaned forward and started scheming.

  * * *

  TWO MORE DAYS passed before they got the opportunity they were looking for. By that time the air in the submarine was growing stale, the recyclers pushed to their limits. There were signs that the ship's power was fading. Herat said it had a typical muon-catalyzed fusion reactor, little more than a tank of hot hydrogen gas surrounded by muon-generators. Not much could go wrong with the generator itself; power must be bleeding off into the water around them. The oxygen recycling system also worked well; its pedigree was hundreds of years of closed system spaceship design.

  More immediate was the fact that they were out of food. The sub continued to drift under the vast ice-sheets of Oculus. Rue watched that strange ceiling pass overhead for hours at a time, feeling frustrated and angry beyond any means of description. She felt now like anger was all she would ever feel. Mike's presence was comforting, but until all of this was over, she couldn't let herself give over to grief. She held his hand and drew on his silent strength, but that was as much as she would allow for now.

  In turn, he seemed to be keeping her at a distance. He seemed guarded, as though she had offended him somehow. Once she saw him holding his offline datapack, contemplating it as though debating what to do with it. When he saw her looking, he quickly put it down with a hurried smile.

  Strangely, it was Herat whose conversation helped pass the time best during the long hours of waiting. It was now clear that a whole ecology flourished down here and he was studying it as best he could in the illumination of their dimming floodlights. At its base were kilometers-long filaments, rich in metals, that drew electricity from the global currents that the magnetic field of Colossus sent through Oculus's oceans. The filaments used electricity the way plants elsewhere used light, so they formed a robust basis for the flourishing of thousands of species of plant and animal. Herat could sit rapt for hours, staring at the clouds of krill and the icicle-like holdfasts that hung from the glacial ceiling.

  Naturally, then, it was he who first saw the lights in the deep.

  "I knew there'd be something," he said, after calling them all to the front of the vessel. Where he pointed, Rue could see a deep, diffuse blue, radiating up from the depths. They had switched off the external floodlights to conserve power, so the light could not be reflecting back from some submerged mountain.

  "Why is it below us and not above?" asked Barendts. Herat shrugged.

  "Mining, maybe? The only way to get many minerals and metals on this planet is to dredge the bottom."

  The lights slowly resolved, like waking ghosts, into spotlights that illuminated giant gantries. Taut cables hung from the gantries, disappearing into the gloom below. The gantries were mounted into the glacial ceiling, but they could see no sign of control stations or submarine docks there. What exactly these cables did remained a mystery.

  "Should we try it?" asked Barendts, gesturing to the laser rifle still held in the sub's metal arms.

  Rue pictured them bickering while their only chance drifted away behind them. "Let's do it."

  Barendts sat down in the copilot's chair, rubbing his hands. "Action at last," he muttered, setting his hands on the controls for the manipulator arms. He had been practicing over the past days, learning how the limbs amplified his own movements. Once he'd gained confidence, he and Herat had gingerly transferred the laser rifle from the large arm it was hanging off to a small set more suited to fine work. Then they'd fired a test shot with the laser, just to make sure it would work.

  Herat's plan was brutally simple. The front part of the sub was an egg made of transparent diamond-matrix. Behind that was more ordinary machinery, made of metallic hydrogen impervious to almost any pressure. The lasers of Barendts's former friends had wreaked havoc amid this machinery. It was dead weight now: ballast. Herat proposed to cut it away.

  Rue kept watching the gantries slide by while they maneuvered the arms around to aim the rifle at the back of the sub. Suddenly she saw a glimmer of bright light ahead and above— a line on the ice ceiling that rapidly grew into an oval of glowing green. "Look!"

  It might have been a natural formation— a weaker and softer core of ice that had melted upward, forming a natural dome in the ceiling kilometers across. One or two nukes could have carved it out in seconds. As the highest point for many kilometers around, such a dome would naturally pool any gases that bubbled up from the ocean depths. Humans could as easily have pumped nitrogen and oxygen into it, until now there was a round cathedral of ice, hundreds of meters of airspace above the ocean, lit with floodlamps and with many buildings bolted to the ice around its periphery. Rue stared, fascinated, at spindle-shapes bobbing in the water that must be the hulls of boats or subs like the one they were in now.

  The whole cavern was only a few kilometers across. "Hurry, or we'll miss it!" Rue said. Barendts was frowning, obviously trying to decide what structural members of the sub to cut first.

  "Fuck it," he said. A line of bright blue light suddenly joined the laser to the back of the sub. Bubbles shot up in a row from a centimeter or so above this line and bright flares of light splashed out from the back. Barendts waggled his hands and the bright line zipped back and forth, impossibly fast.

  The sub lurched. Rue watched a large piece of machinery plummet into darkness. "Good," she said. "I think we're rising."

  "Just to be sure," said Barendts and waved the beam again. Bright sparks flew and abruptly the cabin lights went out and the noise of fans that had been omnipresent for days, ceased.

  "Oops," said the marine. "I guess we're committed now." Rue could barely see his shrug in the blue glow from the approaching cavern.

  They were rising, but not fast enough. Rue watched in frustration as bright water began to scroll past overhead. She saw catwalks, boats tied up just meters above them.

  "Maybe we should swim for it," she suggested hesitatingly. Herat shook his head.

  "We'd freeze to death or drown— or both," he pointed out. "Listen, Barendts, does that laser have a flashlight setting? Maybe we can get someone's attention."

  "Good thought." The marine pointed the laser upward and fired it. The bright blue light jutted up, throwing wild shadows across the wavering image of the cavern's ceiling.

  "No flashlight setting, by the way," said Barendts, just before a huge chunk of ice slammed into the water meters away. "Bu
t that ought to get their attention."

  They were barely a meter below the surface now, but the current had taken them almost all the way across the cavern. She saw the ice ceiling coming up again ahead of them.

  Suddenly light flooded the cabin. Underwater spotlights had come on around the periphery of the cavern. Now the sleek shapes of divers appeared in the water, wrapped in bubbles like spiraling wings. Six or seven of them swam after the sub.

  "Here we go," said Barendts. The lines of blue light shot out from the vicinity of the divers and sparks flew right below where Rue was standing. She jumped in surprise.

  The sub's manipulator arms, including the laser rifle, sank quickly out of sight. One of the divers approached them, his own rifle held out prominently.

  Barendts grinned. "This is the part where we put our hands up," he said, demonstrating.

  Three of the other divers were towing lines. They attached these to the sub and soon they were on the surface, being towed toward a set of docks where a number of other subs lay at berth.

  "Let's get out of here," said Rue. She headed for the hatch. Herat laughed and shook his head.

  "We never equalized pressure, at least not as far as I can tell from our busted instruments," he said. "The air out there will crush you like a grape if you open that hatch."

  "Oh." She pointed at the divers now squatting atop their hull. "Do they know that?"

  "Let's hope so." The divers hopped off, into the water, and their sub was hoisted out of the water. As it slowly turned, water rolling down the sides, Rue got a good look at the cavern they had come to.

  Halfway up the blue wall of the cavern, a huge opening gave onto an even larger space, this one well above the waterline. The cavern they were in was just a lower dock area for what looked like an entire city carved out of the ice.

  "What are those?" Tall shapes like smooth stalagmites stood in bright glimmering ranks under the lights of that other cavern. Rue pressed her nose against the diamond hull and peered at them. As the water stopped running past her eyes, she got a good look, but still couldn't figure out what she was seeing.