Permanence

by Karl Schroeder

  "It's all about time, Rue— a species' attitude to time, I mean. The problem with faster-than-light travel is that it promises instant escape from any problem. The Rights Economy is proof of that: We expand and expand, with no thought to limits or tomorrow. Meanwhile, we rot from within.

  "The Envy, and you, and this place have convinced me that there's another way. Maybe that's the secret of the Lasa— maybe they turned their back on FTL and conducted their civilization at a slower rhythm…. Anyway, if you'd asked me twenty years ago which of our cultures had more potential, yours or mine, I'd have said the R.E. But I don't believe that any longer.

  "You've allowed me to see what it was we nearly destroyed when we took the lit worlds away from the halo. For that, I'll be eternally grateful to you."

  His expression became more sober. "I have the benefit of my years. Bequith… Michael gave me a message for you," he said. "He told me to tell you that he cannot abandon his people— those on Kimpurusha or elsewhere in the Rights Economy. He said that while he is a citizen of the R.E. by conquest, still he can't abandon his world while it's under the kind of threat that Crisler represents. He wishes to find a way to go home as soon as possible, to warn people about Crisler's plans."

  You fool! Rue wasn't sure if she was angry at herself or at Mike. She should not have created this dilemma for him. Mike didn't know why she had asked him to take citizenship; as far as he knew, Crisler had cleanly escaped, and even now Rue herself didn't know how the powers of the Compact might catch him. For Mike, this ceremony must seem like an admission of defeat— an attempt by her to get him to abandon the chase, and settle down on Colossus.

  She blinked until she could see the words on the page before her, and began speaking past a dry and tight throat:

  "Whereas it is in the nature of human beings to grow and accept new conditions; and whereas it is in the nature of our great society to welcome into its bosom those who have embraced our principles and customs…"

  PART FIVE

  Treasure World

  23

  THE CALL CAME, as regular as clockwork, one month after the last one. This time, Michael was too busy to even politely decline to speak.

  Slow bubbles trailed up from behind his breather. The way they popped up to the ceiling of these flooded tunnels, then skated along the translucent blue ice like quicksilver never ceased to fascinate him. He had swum on many different planets in the years of his service to Herat; swimming through the flooded tunnels of these abandoned Oculus settlements was an experience unlike any other. The ice that made up the walls, ceilings, and floors of the chambers ranged through thousands of shades from emerald green to deep azure. The quality of color changed as the lights on Michael's helmet and helper bots moved. It only took one person to turn their head and his surroundings could change from dark tunnel to jewel-lined hall.

  The caller remained on the line for a few moments, her presence visible as a flashing triangle to Michael's upper left. He had instructed his answering service not to take messages from her, so after a minute the triangle faded out. He found himself sighing in relief, though he knew there was no way he would have answered. When the triangle vanished, though, it left a hollow feeling which was all too familiar lately.

  "What's up?" Barendts had been forging ahead, as usual, and now he returned, kicking strongly through the icy water. His entourage of jet-driven bots spiralled around him, little lamps darting to and fro like the flashlights of inquisitive fairies.

  "They've been here, I'm sure of it!" Barendts waved at the tunnel behind him. "Just a bit further."

  "I'm with you." Michael couldn't read the marine's expression through his facemask. He knew Barendts was eager to prove that this abandoned sub-ice town held autotroph trash. He was as unhappy as Michael to be stranded on this halo world, so far from the action. He wanted to have something to show for their time here, if and when they succeeded in getting back to High Space.

  The tunnel he was pointing to looked unstable, however. Large slabs of its wall bulged inward, become as malleable as wax from the pressure of all the ice above it. Long cracks ran up those swollen walls.

  The bots seemed calm, though; Michael sighed again and swam after Barendts. "Just this last one," he said. "Then we go back, empty handed or no."

  The autotrophs didn't exactly trade with their fanatical green skinned worshippers. They disposed of garbage by either dropping it into the deep ocean, or hiding it in any of thousands of abandoned tunnels that riddled the coast of the Northern Ocean. Humans had lived here for centuries, and boom towns had sprung up and vanished many times, some on the surface, some in the depths. The green men explored the caverns, and occasionally came out with treasures they could trade to the university for hard currency. Michael and Barendts had spied on them long enough to pick up their search habits, and then had begun looking themselves. Several times now, they had discovered lodes of autotroph technology, hidden deep in the collapsing grottoes where no sane human would normally venture.

  A chain of madly swimming bots lit the ice tunnels ahead of Michael, so that even when Barendts went behind a wall, he could see the marine's moving green trail through the ice. He followed the bots around the corner, and found himself at the bottom of a shaft braced with corroded rails: the familiar shape of an old elevator shaft. This was a lucky find, it might give them access to levels of the settlement unreachable by other means.

  Barendts's shout confirmed his hope. "It's the frickin' town hall!" His helmet lamp whipped back and forth at the top of the shaft, casting shadows and highlights down the walls. In moments Michael was beside him, gasping despite himself at the place they had come to.

  Sometime in the distant past, settlers had carved out a large cavern here, maybe with a clean nuke. Michael's headlamps couldn't reach the end of it. Maybe it was a hundred meters across— maybe a thousand. All was darkness beyond the feeble fan of his light, but that glow was strong enough to pick out drowned buildings: He saw walls and the black maws of open doorways, windows.

  "Supremely creepy," said Barendts. The marine sounded happy— as he always was when he had something to do.

  They had been sharing an apartment now for four months. Ever since Rue Cassels stranded Michael here on Oculus, he had been trying to get back to the Rights Economy. (Well, she hadn't really stranded him, he knew; she was stuck here, too, at least for now.) Michael had been adrift for too long, and was almost grateful to her for forcing a decision upon him. He was no longer permitted to speak to her, or to Laurent Herat, and so he'd had to make some long-deferred decisions. He had decided to become a rebel again.

  It was just a shame that there was no way he could act on that decision, trapped as he was in the halo worlds.

  "Come on!" Barendts shot away into the submerged streets of the cavern settlement. Michael followed, trying to ignore the way this place reminded him of Dis.

  Those dire kami seldom visited him these days. He felt he was, if not getting over that experience, at least slowly reaching an accommodation with it. Unfortunate, then, to have to swim past these empty facades and hear the kami whisper in the back of his mind, so strong, so sad.

  "Heads up!" That was Barendts, his voice suddenly urgent. Suddenly, all the bots went dark, leaving Michael staring into the narrowed cone of light from his own headlamp— light that showed only grainy water, and the corner of a long-abandoned building.

  Prudently, he tuned that light down to a vague glow, and switched on his goggles' light amplifiers. "What is it?" he radioed.

  "Visitors," said Barendts curtly. It took Michael a few minutes to find the marine in the speckly gray shadowland of the now-dark town. Barendts was hovering behind a half-fallen wall that might once have defined someone's garden, back when the invisibly distant ceiling held sunlamps and there was air here instead of water. Barendts pointed over the wall as Michael slid next to him.

  Lights wavered in the distance. Michael counted seven sources, about half a kilometer away. This cavern was
indeed huge. From here, all he could see was diffuse greenish lozenges slowly moving around the abandoned buildings.

  "I'll send a bot," said Barendts.

  "No." Michael put a hand on the marine's shoulder. "I want to see this myself."

  Barendts started to protest, but Michael ignored him, kicking strongly into the darkness beyond the wall. It made sense to send the bots ahead, but Michael had never been one to hide behind remotes— a trait he'd picked up from Herat, most likely. Better to do fieldwork yourself.

  Anyway, he had not ceased to be a scientist by choice. Michael was still welcome at the university, but he couldn't work with Laurent Herat, because the professor had signed some kind of secrecy deal along with Rue Cassels. Whatever the secret was, it was paid for by turning their backs on the struggles of the people in the Rights Economy. Michael was surprised and hurt that Herat of all people should be willing to do that— the Cycler Compact might be a declining power, but its decline was slow and graceful. It didn't involve the deaths of millions.

  Michael had petitioned the Compact to allow Barendts and himself to return to the R.E. It was absolutely critical that the rebels learn about the weapon Crisler hoped to find at Osiris and Apophis. Rue knew that, and she had the ear of the highest officials in the government.

  The petition had been turned down, without explanation.

  Every day that passed, Crisler drew closer to the Twins, and to escaping with the Chicxulub weapon. Frustration had drawn Michael back to the autotrophs as much as curiosity. Frustration drove him now as he closed in on the distant lights, for the university had refused to allow him to visit the green men again. Herat could; Michael was only partially mollified by the knowledge that even Herat had not been allowed to visit the autotrophs themselves.

  He took a roundabout route, hiding behind the softening outlines of buildings, confident in his destination because the glow was constantly visible. Finally only one building separated him from whoever it was; he took a chance, and swam into the crumbling structure itself.

  The walls were peeling, the floor covered in a layer of hazy mud. The feeling of desolation here was overwhelming, and he could feel his NeoShinto implant stirring, finding echoes of the kami of lost lives here. Michael ignored it, and made his way to a room at the front of the building.

  The wall here had numerous holes in it. Light shone strongly through them, and he could hear a thrumming sound through the water now. Michael swam slowly over and put his goggles against one of the lower holes.

  Not three meters away, a thing like a giant silver scarab was lowering boxes and canisters off its back, and arranging them carefully in the silt. There was no recognizable head to the thing, nor any sense organs he could see. But drifting around and above it were hundreds of tiny bright beads.

  Michael recognized them: They were like the ones that had swarmed around him and Herat during their visit to the autotrophs four months ago. The swarm had spoken to them; it was an integral part of the autotrophs' artificial intelligence.

  Michael had recovered some dead beads from other autotroph trash sites. He'd taken one apart, and figured he knew how they were powered. And the aliens didn't seem to keep good track of the things— which sparked an idea.

  Some of the beads were hovering very close to the wall. Michael rose up on his haunches and peered through another crack. One hovered not twenty centimeters away. Its little black head was pointing down and away— watching the silver thing deposit its cargo, no doubt.

  Months of anger at his betrayal by his companions made Michael unwilling to hesitate: He simply reached out and grabbed the bead, popping it into the metal mesh bag he carried at his waist. Then he put his eye to the crack and watched to see what would happen next.

  Nothing happened. He heard a faint bzzt come over his radio, but the beads outside didn't move and the silver thing went on arranging its trash. The metal mesh probably blocked the thing's signal. And there were more of the beads hovering within reach.

  In seconds he had a dozen of them in his sack. They circled lazily inside it, as if made lethargic by the cold water and high pressure. Maybe that was true. Michael eased back from the cracked wall and made his way to another building some distance away. There he found an interior room and turned up his headlight.

  He opened the sack while tuning his radio across frequencies. The beads swirled lazily inside the mesh; after a minute he hit on the right frequency. A complex, sonorous hum came from the little things.

  "Hello?" he said through the radio. "Do you guys speak Anglic?"

  "Ph-ph-ph-phage," said a pipsqueek voice in his ears. "You eat us now."

  "No," he said. "I just want to talk."

  "No talk," said the tiny AIs. "We leave now."

  "I'll let you go after we talk. How's that?"

  "No. We leave planet. Ancient weapon in hands of phages. Must warn others of the Real."

  "You're leaving Oculus? Leaving this planet?"

  "Here to make preparations. Leave caches where phages not find."

  Michael chewed his lip, thinking hard. "You know there's humans going after the Chicxulub weapon. You're going to pull up roots here— warn the autotroph empire?"

  "We warn. Destroy phages before weapon built."

  Michael raced back to where he'd left Barendts. The marine was startled when he ducked back over the wall; Michael had come from an unexpected direction.

  "What the hell are you doing?"

  "We're done here, at least for now," said Michael. "We've got to get these things back to Lux."

  "But there's a veritable trove of stuff there—"

  "Which we can come back for later."

  "Are you crazy? The green guys might find it."

  Michael swam determinedly toward the black maw of the elevator shaft. "Forget about the trash. Something more important's come up."

  As he swam, he heard faint flashes of radio from the mesh bag. The little beads were clamoring to be let out.

  Soon, he thought. When we have the right audience.

  * * *

  A CONSTANT WIND soared through the towers of Lux. It flooded in across the mountains and wound sinuously around the hills, coming from the dark hemisphere of Oculus. Sometimes, when Rue stepped out onto the balcony of her apartment high above the city, she had a momentary panic reaction: hull breach! This reaction was never more than a flash, but it always left her jammed with adrenaline. Lux held no outlet for the jagged energy of fear; not now that Crisler and Mallory were gone.

  She didn't miss the bastards, of course; it was Max she longed for. And (though she tried not to admit this to herself) Mike.

  So, at times like this she walked. Walking was a luxury she'd never known on Allemagne, but on Treya she had learned to associate walking with freedom. On this occasion, as commonly happened, her steps had taken her into the Night City.

  Since Colossus never moved in the sky, day and night were conventions on Oculus. The day was defined by three eight-hour shifts, and social networks arose chiefly among people who shared shifts. Soon after their rescue from the ocean depths, Rue had taken care to move her «day» shift to correspond with Michael Bequith's "night." That way, she could minimize the chances of their meeting.

  Sometimes, as she walked here, Rue would think about Dis. She had only visited Michael Bequith's nightmare one time, on board the submarine; but it had been enough. In its loneliness and isolation that frozen scrap of world had been akin to Allemagne and the Envy. Yet, of all Mike's kami, those of Dis were not spirits of a place, but echoes of an ancient species. Rue had felt them— present, yet fading, like a dying ember. They were merging back into the all-encompassing sky of stars— yet Rue had not felt that they were vanishing. Rather, they were expanding, like the sphere of light from a star, gradually becoming one with the vast and eternal stillness of space itself.

  All her life Rue had thought of herself as small and singular, like a mote of dust battered to and fro by fate. In one moment of understanding the kami o
f Dis had shown her fragile individuality to be an illusion. The reality of who she— or anyone— was, was infinitely greater.

  The Night City was a vast sprawling complex of arcades and sub-ice warrens, all windowless. There were huge caverns here, their ceilings studded with lights to simulate stars. The city held markets, restaurants, theaters, and the inevitable prostitute's quarter. The constant murmur of crowds was seductive, the press of bodies allowing a reassuring anonymity— but Rue often walked the darkest streets, because what was pitch-black to others was perfectly visible to her. She could easily avoid those who lurked in what they thought were shadows.

  After two years of struggling to better herself and her people, Rue found herself alone again. The remnants of her crew were scattered, Rebecca, Blair, Evan, and Corinna back aboard the Envy, but as prisoners; Max forever dead; and Michael Bequith exiled into the streets of Lux. The only soul who knew even the slightest thing about Rue or her dreams was the academic Herat, and though she saw him during their regular sessions of militia training, she didn't feel close to him.

  Few recognized the slim young woman who paced through the crowds, head down, hands jammed in the pockets of her tough workers' slacks. Anyone who thought they recognized the famous cycler captain from Erythrion probably decided they were mistaken. What would someone so wealthy and powerful be doing passing like a shabbily dressed ghost alone through the back alleys of the Night City?

  She understood now that there were two states of being in the interstellar halo: in transit and stranded.

  Rue was standing hipshot outside a dance club she sometimes came to, when she received a call. She hesitated before answering; it might be better tonight to lose herself in the crush of moving bodies and the pulse of the music inside. Sighing, she said, "Yes?"

  "Rue, it's Laurent Herat. I know it's late, but I need to talk to you."