Permanence

by Karl Schroeder

  The two marines carrying the seed were blocking the exit to the chamber. People's eyes were momentarily on them, so no one but Rue noticed as two sleek gray shapes shot out of the black smoke in which they'd been hiding, like Earth squids leaving clouds of ink. Here they came, looming closer and larger, she could see the Lasa writing on them—

  "Admiral!" It was the Banshee calling. "What the hell— are those part of the cycler?"

  "Admiral," cried Rue confidently, "I think you should look to your ship."

  Crisler whirled to look at the inscape window. He was just in time to see two spindle-shapes, glowing brightly from the Banshee's lasers, smack into the axis assembly of the starship. Amazingly, the interceptors bounced, tumbling unhurt away from the wreckage before each regained its poise. Then as one they turned their antimatter beams on the damaged core of Crisler's ship, and the flash of light overwhelmed the camera. The inscape window went black.

  "Perhaps it's time to talk terms," said Rue in the most self-assured voice she could muster. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mike Bequith's eyebrows shoot up, then he smiled dazzlingly at her.

  "Captain Cassels," Crisler said in a tired voice, "were those your ships?"

  "Indeed they were, Admiral," she replied. "But not all of my ships. If you or one of your men could find an external camera and aim it at your own newly arrived allies, you might see something more."

  Crisler gestured impatiently to one of the marines. The man narrowed his eyes, and another inscape window opened.

  Moments later a new inscape window bloomed. This was probably transmitting from one of the cameras on the outside of the cycler because the picture was grainy and ill-focused; the camera was at the limit of its zoom. Still, it showed enough to make Rue feel a rush of relief.

  There were the rest of Crisler's ships. Three were mirrored spheres, each twice as large as the Lasa habitat of the Envy. The last was little more than a girder framework with dozens of cargo balloons attached to it.

  And closing fast on the ships were all thirteen of Rue's remaining interceptors.

  "My men have just taken out the Banshee," she said. "Unless you and your men surrender immediately, the rest of my ships are going to cut yours to pieces."

  Crisler looked terribly weary. "Just how did you get here? Those aren't like any ships I've seen before. And is that Lasa writing on them?"

  "I'm afraid I can't tell you anything, Admiral. But as you can see, I'm not just here with a little band of… what did you call us? Pirates? As you saw, we've got some short-range interceptors. Obviously, they had to come from somewhere…"

  The admiral glowered. "No deal," he said finally. "I've accomplished my mission here already. This ship appears to be leaving, and so we'll be leaving with it. Once the cycler is underway, we'll have it create a habitat large enough to house all of us comfortably. Then we'll steer her back to Chandaka. Those little interceptors of yours can't stop us— this entire system is full of laser defenses. They hit anything that threatens the construction cylinder— and what do you bet they protect this cycler as well?"

  He shook his head. "Regrettable that I have to lose my other ships. But it's an acceptable loss."

  To Rue's surprise, Professor Herat raised his hand. "Admiral, this might be the time to mention that there isn't enough power in this system to actually launch a cycler."

  "Of course there is," snapped Crisler. "They launched the Envy from here. And this ship, as you can see, is on its way."

  One of the inscape windows showed the glowing wreckage of the Banshee dwindling behind them. Rue noticed that everyone had begun to drift toward one wall of the sphere: They were starting to accelerate.

  "Sir," said the marine who had been controlling the inscape windows. "I've located a signal originating from Captain Cassels."

  "Disable her suit radio," said Crisler. "That's it then," he said when the marine had finished. "Cassels, I am going to bring home the means to end the rebellion. I'll have the Chicxulub weapon adapted to hunt the rebels anywhere they go. After we let the ships loose, we grow, they whither. It's as simple as that."

  "But the rebels use alien technology," said Katz. His voice was strained. "How can you target the rebels without also hitting the aliens?"

  The admiral shrugged. "Collateral damage. The professor here should know," he said to Herat, "that all our overtures to them failed anyway. Humanity has no friends in this universe. If they won't be our allies, then they're vermin."

  "But once the genie's out of the bottle, how do you stop it? The ships will continue to breed, they'll always be out there…"

  Crisler shook his head. "That's where R.E. technology comes into it. We intend to adapt the ships so that they and all their systems are reliant on microtransactions with a Rights Owner. In order to breed, they'll have to contact us for permission."

  Mike laughed humorlessly. "And you'll be the Rights Owner… of an entire fleet of warships."

  The admiral nodded. "Any good plan has room in it for both altruism and self-interest, Dr. Bequith. This is a good plan."

  He waved to the marines by the door. "Take the prisoners outside. You can use them for target practice."

  Rue caught Mike's eye, and nodded. He reached behind him.

  "No!" shouted Katz. He jumped at Crisler and for just a second he had the admiral by the throat. Then his own momentum carried him past. There was a bright flash and he screamed. When he hit the far wall and bounced away, he was limp.

  "If anyone else tries—" Crisler started to say, but at that moment a swarm of hissing, buzzing things rose from behind Mike Bequith and flew straight at the marines.

  "Bots!" shouted one marine, as he tried to bring his laser to bear. Four flying beads landed on the laser itself, and began vibrating madly. He shouted and let go of the smoking rifle.

  Then Michael Bequith was struggling with him, trying to get the taser at his belt. Rue saw Barendts leap forward too, and the small chamber erupted into combat. Rue dove out of the way of a laser shot, only to collide with one of the researchers.

  "Tasers only!" shrieked Crisler as a stray beam burned a line down the leg of his suit.

  People were boiling everywhere, kicking each other in their haste to escape the chamber. Rue found herself propelled in the direction of the control sphere. She grabbed its crystalline edge, and pulled herself inside.

  Instantly stars bloomed around her. Since crafting the controls systems of the Envy, Rue had spent many hours in her own cycler's cockpit, so she was instantly familiar with this one. Quickly, with one eye on the mayhem outside, she zoomed the view out.

  Osiris and Apophis made twin walls on either side of her. At her navel was the cycler, and a meter away the construction shack had returned to its normal cylindrical shape. Next to it a tiny version of the Banshee was drifting, gutted and dark. The two interceptors waited near it.

  She moved her hands within the hologram to call up the cycler's flight plan. The Twins zoomed out, becoming small spheres, and now a curved line showed the cycler's course. It was going to whip closely around Osiris, and then accelerate outward…

  In exactly the opposite direction to Chandaka. If somehow the machinery here were able to accelerate this ship up to the same velocity as the Envy— eighty-five percent light-speed— it would take it a decade or more to cycle back to Chandaka. No, Crisler would choose another destination. There must be another lit world closer on this course… In a moment, she had it. She knew where Crisler would abandon the cycler and return to High Space.

  An arm reached into the sphere and dragged her out. She started to fight, then saw that it was Mike. "Come on!" he shouted. "We've got to get out now!"

  Smoke had filled the chamber, which was still full of struggling forms. She followed Mike to the exit and out, to find herself with the rest of her crew, and most of the science team, in the balloon-hab. Herat, of all people, was standing over the entrance, firing into the smoke with a laser rifle.

  "This way!" It was Harp, ge
sturing from an airlock opposite to the one that led to the hibernation cocoons.

  Rue grabbed Herat's arm. "Professor. Laurent! We have to go!"

  Herat whirled. His face was a mask of anger. " — Shot Henry. Just shot him down!"

  "I know. Come!" She hauled him through the door after Harp.

  "Status," she said to Harp as the door closed behind her. Rue found that as soon as she stopped moving she drifted to one wall of this new chamber; might as well call that direction down, she decided. This new room was packed with supplies like the one on the other side of the hibernation chamber.

  "They seem to have wrapped hab chambers like this around the nose of the cycler," said Harp. "That'd mean there's about ten of them—"

  "Twelve," interrupted Corinna Chandra. She was actually smiling, a rarity for her. "We're continuing to accelerate, Captain, and not all of these people were able to bring their helmets." About half the science staff had made it out.

  "Anyone want to stay and take their chances with Crisler?" shouted Rue. No one moved. "All right. These balloon-habs are anchored to the cycler somehow. We're going to detach this one and float away. Got it? Get moving!" She clapped her gloves together, and was rewarded by a wave of pain from her injured hand.

  She could see shadows of movement on the other side of the door: Crisler's marines. They could have cut through the wall separating the two habs in a second, but doubtless they or Crisler had realized that this little ring of balloons was their only chance of survival if they were to ride the cycler out of here. They couldn't afford to damage it.

  Rue's crew were swarming over the floor and staring out the hab's one small window, looking for the points where the balloon-hab was attached to straps glued onto the cycler's skin. Harp turned his laser on the lowest setting and at Evan's command, made several quick cuts through the floor. Rue's ear's popped as air hissed out of the hab for a few tense seconds before the hab's skin repaired itself.

  "Now we're only held by the doors," said Evan. They set to work on those.

  Mike Bequith had been huddled with Herat in one corner. Now he floated over to Rue. "I count twelve. We should be able to get everyone safely into the interceptors…" He trailed off, looking around in obvious puzzlement. "Rue… where's Barendts?"

  "Your little rebel friend? I don't know," she snapped.

  "But he was one of the first ones out," said Mike.

  She sighed. "So?"

  Mike took her by the shoulders— she was about to protest, when he said, "Rue. Where is the cycler mother seed?"

  "Look, I think we have more important things to think about right now."

  "No, Rue, I don't think we do," said Professor Herat, who had come up behind Mike.

  "The seeds are the key— they're the real treasure of this world, Rue. With them, Crisler might learn how to make his self-reproducing warships. And with them, you could make any number of Jentry's Envys…"

  Corinna and Evan had detached their side of the door through which Rue had entered this hab. The whole hab shifted a bit; it was now hanging from the cycler only by the other door.

  "Barendts took the seed," said Mike.

  "Took it?" Rue laughed wildly. "Took it where?"

  Mike looked at her. A look of shocked comprehension dawned on his face. "Of course!"

  He dove for the hab's other door, elbowing Corinna aside as he closed his faceplate. Before Rue could react, he had opened the door and swung through.

  The door hissed shut. Rue turned, gaping, to Professor Herat. Herat had put a hand over his mouth, fingers trembling.

  "Laurent? What is it?"

  "Crisler's not the only one who might be able to resurrect the Chicxulub weapon," said Herat. "The rebels could do it… if they too had a seed…"

  Suddenly the hab let loose and began to tumble. Rue barely felt the motion. Barendts was making for one of the interceptors with the seed in tow. And Michael Bequith had gone to join him.

  * * *

  MICHAEL FOUND ANOTHER airlock and cycled through it. He was too busy inventorying his supplies to think about what would happen next. He had a laser rifle, reaction pistol, and those autotroph bees that had survived their diversionary attack. Those huddled in one of his belt pouches now as he opened the outer airlock door to hard vacuum.

  Osiris loomed above him. Below he saw nothing but stars— no, that wasn't quite true. One bead of the necklace of habs had fallen from the cycler. He watched it tumble, intact so far, away into the dark.

  Between them, he knew Rue's crew and the science team would be able to find a way to signal her interceptors. They would be all right, he told himself as he braced himself, preparing to leap into the void.

  Funny— not too long ago, he had stood on Dis, facing just such an empty sunless sky. Then, Michael had made sure he was tethered at all times; the prospect of drifting off into endless space had terrified him.

  There was not a whisper of that old terror now as he stepped off the cycler into the void.

  The cycler shot up past him, a moving graffiti-scrawled wall visible only by faint starlight. Michael got the light-enhancers in his helmet working, and turned away from the now-bright starship.

  The stars were sharp points; as the cycler passed, the exhaust from its engines was blinding. He jetted away from twin columns of light that speared into the night. As he turned again he saw the oval glow of an aurora crowning Apophis.

  He knew in general where he was going, so began jetting toward the ruins of the Banshee. Barendts wasn't visible yet; he might never be unless Michael got a lucky glimpse of his reaction pistol firing. Uncomfortably, that suggested that Michael might miss him and go to the wrong interceptor.

  He couldn't afford to think about that. Michael recited a mantra to calm himself as he flew through the darkness. All was silent, and he had no sense of motion at all. Only the faint whirring of his suit's systems, and his own breathing, told Michael that he was still real, a physical man and not a spirit drifting in the void.

  Part of him was bracing for an onslaught of despair from the kami of Dis. Surely they were still there? But no, they had gone silent. Michael realized this with a kind of shock— when had that happened? When had his constant companions, who had dragged him down all these months, evaporated?

  It must have been his decision to rejoin the rebels— to take back Kimpurusha, or die trying. Was that it? He tried to remember his days on Oculus… but no, they had been there then.

  Perhaps it was the battle that had just passed. The immediacy of it, the adrenaline. Wasn't this his natural environment now? The battlefield?

  Michael frowned, and shook his head. He was no soldier. He might make a credible spy, but he'd had no stomach for hurting anyone, even the marines who had tried to kill him today. Barendts, a trained fighter, had carried most of the attack that got them out of Crisler's clutches.

  Far ahead of him a tiny star flared to life, then died. That must be Barendts. Michael lined himself up and made the difficult course correction that would take him that way.

  They were approaching the construction shack now. In enhanced light, he could see the white spindle-shapes of the interceptors. Barendts was making for the one on the right. Good.

  If both Crisler and the rebels had the secret of the Chicxulub ships, at least there would be a level playing field. Maybe the ships would clash among themselves, ignoring the humans until there was a victor in space. Maybe they could spare lives, not take them that way.

  Sadly, though, the halo worlds would lose either way. Without more Jentry's Envys, they were doomed to increasing isolation and irrelevance. Rue's civilization, which he had been born into and still loved, would come to an end.

  Barendts was a faintly visible star-shape struggling with a cylindrical white seed at the airlock of the interceptor. The marine hadn't spotted Michael yet.

  He knew he shouldn't have left Rue and the others helpless in the balloon-hab. He cast about for something to take his mind off of that in these last minute
s of free fall. Fear… Yes! He still couldn't remember when the kami of Dis had left him. He tried to focus on that. It hadn't been in battle, he knew that now. Before that, then… and he had it.

  When Irina Case told him that his kami might be the means for reviving the spiritual life of New Armstrong, something had changed in Michael. He'd had no time to think about it then; he'd been arrested immediately afterward, but his kami were powerful and despite what he'd said to Irina, he now believed that he had not simply found them, but had created them; they were not real entities with lives of their own, they were his Art. With them, he had somehow strengthened Rue through her grief. Maybe his kami really could heal a whole world.

  And then, as the interceptor fell into the fiery maw of Colossus, he'd had a momentary flash when he thought he understood Rue's Supreme Meme. Somehow, in that moment of insight, the dark whispering voices of Dis had departed for good.

  This realization was so astonishing that he almost missed the interceptor. He made a frantic last blast with the pistol, and was actually able to touch the magnetic soles of his boots to the hull of the interceptor and grab the back end of the seed, before Barendts noticed him.

  The marine whirled, laser raised.

  "It's just me," said Michael. "Brilliant move, skiving off with this thing."

  "Bequith!" Barendts laughed shakily. "Quick, let's get it inside. I think I know enough to pilot one of these through the drop; say, how'd you like a holiday on Kimpurusha?" He holstered the laser again.

  Michael felt his heart leap at the name of his homeworld. "Kimpurusha? Is that where you're taking it?"

  Barendts laughed again. "You never knew, did you? — That's where I was trained. Years after your people tried their insurrection— but they still knew you. I knew who you were when you first came on board the Spirit of Luna!"

  "How?" Had rebel cells continued to exist on Kimpurusha after Michael's own uprising failed? No, that wasn't possible; they would have tried to contact him, surely.