by Wil McCarthy
“Small mercies,” he said. And yet, he supposed the victory was important in its own way. They had given some of the crystals to Asia, to help focus her contemplation before the hearing. They'd also given some to the portmaster and, worse yet, to Jack-Jack. Jafre wondered how many he'd have to hand out before he was done. He had no other leverage, no other means of persuasion.
“Now,” said Asia, “We seem to be in agreement about the general interstellar broadcast, but do we have any thoughts on content?”
“At least five gigs multimedia,” Dao Vitter said without getting up. “There's too much to talk about in less time than that.”
A woman across the table was shaking her head. “Much too expensive. We know almost nothing, how can you fill up that much space? With full data compression, even one gig of general broadcast would eat up about ten megawatt hours. That means no lights, anywhere on the planet, for three minutes. You'd never get the populace to agree to that.”
“This is important,” Dao said. “We're inviting Terran scientists to travel almost forty light years to see this stuff. What do we tell them? 'Please come soonest, we've found some rocks?'“
“It is imperative,” Jafre agreed, “that Earth be informed of the full scope of our discovery. Ancient though the samples may be, if Dao's assessment of this material is correct, we 're possibly looking at our first evidence of alien intelligence.”
And if that doesn't get the Terrans here, he added silently, we'll have to come up with something even more dramatic. Notes from God, maybe, or little fucking blue people with umbrellas sticking out of their heads. Something!
Eighty years, he thought. The time seemed to stretch before him like a dark and featureless desert. They will be here in eighty years.
Asia examined her fingernails. “Well, it's really up to the President, but let's push for one full gigabyte. The public is already getting excited, and this may well be worth three minutes of darkness.”
“We can't do it in less than five gigs,” Dao protested.
“We'll be very succinct,” Asia said gruffly, without looking up from her nails.
PART TWO
MALPROKSIME
“You see, wiretelegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. A radio operates exactly the same way. The only difference is that there is no cat.
—Albert Einstein
“Quantum mechanics, hmm. You put a cat in a box, along with a hammer and some poison and a radioactive isotope... I forget exactly how this goes. Anyway, keep some bandages on hand, because I guarantee the cat won't be happy.”
—Jack-Jack Snyder
Chapter Three
“I believe that puts you in 'check,'“ Yezu said after moving his piece. He frowned down at the projection as if it displeased him in some way. Well, probably it did. Yezu Manaka complained with equal venom about the food, the staff, the accommodations, all of which seemed fine as far as Tom Kreider could tell.
“Yes, I believe it does” Tom agreed. Yezu's horsey, his Knight, stood poised to jump on Tom's King, and a pointy-headed Bishop stood by in case Tom's move was to the right. He moved left instead, seeking shelter behind a wall of pawns. He really should have 'castled' when he had the chance, to get his rook into play. He seemed to have a problem with rooks.
“You should have castled when you had the chance,” Yezu observed dryly. He moved the horsey again, and again it threatened the King. “Check.”
“Oh, damn,” said Tom.
In their mind-numbing boredom, he and Yezu had gravitated toward one another, and once together had discovered a slight but mutual interest in Introspectia's library of games. They'd perused various simulations, of wars and navigation problems and great, complex biological systems, and simpler games, too, with fake money and bright colors and rules a child could easily grasp. Nothing had appealed, particularly to Yezu, until they had come across the historical cache, and within it, “chess.” Its very name smacking of ancientness, of secrets long forgotten, the game had fairly leaped out at them.
Relativity moved them forward in time, true enough, but even so they headed chronologically backward, headed for the primitive conditions and mores of frontier society. How better to prepare themselves?
“You know, we've only a week to go,” Tom said, brightening a little from his gaming trance. “I guess we've survived the ordeal, maybe earned the reward. I try not to get too charged up, but really it does excite me. Aliens!”
“Possible aliens,” Yezu said, with an air of crabby wistfulness. “Ech. Possible, dead, extinct, aliens. And we have nine days, subjective, until we reach the planet. Probably another ten years back home.”
Ah, relativity. The starship Introspectia traveled within a smidgen of a percent of the speed of light, had done so for thirty days since its departure from high Earth orbit. Time dilated at such speeds. Time shrank and stretched and got away from you. When they got back to Earth, in a year or two, their friends and relatives would be almost a century older.
Yezu had a right to complain. What a hell of a price to pay! And relativity had smacked them in other ways, too. “Extremely slow data transfer,” as Introspectia's crew called the phenomenon that prevented their sending and receiving personal messages. And also “dangerously accelerated cosmic radiation,” for which they took pills, and “enterochronologic disorientation,” for which they did not. And there was nothing to see from the observation ports except streaky blackness, although viewscreens could show you the cluster of blue stars huddling ahead of the ship, the cluster of red stars trailing behind. Static views, or nearly static, changing only a little from day to day, never showing anything new or surprising. Even Malhela System, their not-so-distant destination, was indistinguishable from the general murk.
“Show a little heart,” Tom said. “We've come a long way, to see something very strange.”
Yezu shook his head, flashed a sad little smile. “I study archaeopaleontological drift patterns. I should be in a quiet nook somewhere. I've left a wife behind, did you know that?”
That stopped Tom. A wife? Tom had left his parents and a pair of brothers and maybe a dozen friends, people whose lives would go on and on without his playing a part in them. Bad enough. But a wife? “That, uh, must have been very hard.”
“Exceedingly so,” Yezu said. He tapped the table here and there, and his knight hopped another few spaces.
Hence all the worry about time, Tom thought. How awful, wondering every minute where she was, what she was doing and with whom! She packing in a year's worth of experiences every day while he sat here playing games, slowly, almost frozen in time!
Something flashed between Tom and Yezu in that moment, a kind of invisible line that marked them now as friends rather than mere acquaintances. The feeling did not entirely please Tom Kreider, as it meant Yezu's troubles were now, in some way, also his own.
Suddenly uncomfortable, he cleared his throat.
“That's check again,” Yezu said quietly.
“Oh, damn.” He moved a piece. “There. Do you uh, need someone to talk to or anything?”
“I need someone to play chess with, Tom.” Yezu's eyes were serious.
Tom nodded and continued playing.
The activity room did not seem very large, nor as loud and crowded and bustling as you would expect. A single homunculus scuttled about unhurriedly, moving and straightening things, brushing away nonexistent dust. Only three of the five tables were occupied, about ten people in all including Tom and Yezu. Over a hundred scientists on this mission, and this left Tom wondering what they all did, where they spent their time. Maybe they had all paired off, to spend the voyage testing the springiness of their mattresses. Half the passengers, and a good sixty percent of the crew, had double-X chromosomes and the bodies to prove it. This made Tom wonder why he hadn't paired off, why he'd spent the past few days with Yezu and not with some blonde and leggy radiologist of Nordic or Slavic descent.
&
nbsp; Ah well. He watched Yezu move a piece, then leaned over and moved one of his own. Quick, not taking the time to think as this game really seemed to demand. Well, the match seemed equal at least, Yezu's half-hearted contemplations not apparently more effective than Tom's intuition.
WHOOMP!
That was the sound of the door preparing to open. Tom looked up. Presently, the door did open, and a new, eleventh person strode in. Good fortune? But no, the newcomer showed no evidence of femaleness, of tall and leggy Nordic-ness. In fact, he seemed a perfect likeness of Jhoe Freetz, that mouthy little guy from the soft sciences. Sociology or something. Not good fortune at all, that.
Jhoe spotted them, and walked over to the table. “Hi, gentlemen.”
“Hello,” Yezu said, looking up for a moment.
Tom nodded. “Hi. Out for a stroll?”
“Out looking for something to do, more like,” Jhoe Freetz confided. “I've spent about two hundred hours in softlink with the ship's library, and my brain has just quit. I tried reverting to multimedia documents and even listening to blank narrations, but it didn't help. I have become a vegetable.”
“And you thought you'd share that with us,” Yezu said, not looking up this time.
“Precisely.” The grin Jhoe exposed held white, straight, perfect teeth. Expensive teeth, if Jhoe had lived anything past about eighty years.
One of Tom's favorite aphorisms stated, “over a hundred you've already blund'red,” which he took to mean that you could not and should not trust young scientists with anything difficult, not until they'd had their chance to blunder and fail and learn patience. Other people took that aphorism to mean very different things, but then “other people” demonstrated their bovine stupidity so regularly and so reliably that Tom felt he could set his symbiont clock by them.
“Playing a bit of chess,” Jhoe observed, his (vain? youthful?) teeth still glittering whitely. His face, too, reminded Tom of a woodcarving, ruggedly handsome in a way that didn't often occur in nature. His brown hair trailed down past his shoulders in a lazy fan-shape that, really, might take hours to sculpt every morning. His skin was a richer, darker shade than people usually wore, and his eyes sparkled improbably. Corneal symbionts, playing games with the light? His nails were painted with clear varnish.
“That's right,” Yezu said.
“Great,” Said Jhoe. “I keep meaning to learn that game, and now I seem to have the time. Do you mind if I watch?”
Tom bristled inwardly. If this guy started saying, “Ooh, I see a good move for you,” and “Oh, you've really messed up with that one,” Tom would chuck him out on his rear.
Yezu looked at Tom, his face blank, simply waiting to see what sort of response Jhoe Freetz would get.
And what am I so snappy about today? Tom thought. True, Jhoe wasn't part of the actual mission, had come along not to study Malhelan artifacts but to study the Malhelan colonists themselves. And yes, he had perfect teeth and a perfect face, and maybe a slight propensity toward ornamentation. But he had counted the same costs, braved the same hardships as anyone else here.
Tom licked his lips, and framed up the politest smile he could muster. “Oh, please do.”
Jhoe Freetz looked relieved. “Thanks. I, uh, haven't had such an easy time making friends here. That's why all the library time...”
Tom felt his cheeks heating a bit. A long time ago, when he'd first arrived at North American University, he'd spent a quiet week poring over multimedia orientation guides and pocket histories, trying to get his bearings. Those hallowed halls had really thrown him, after the cheery hustle and hurry of East Boston. Everything so big and so serious! But he'd met others as the days wore on, young men like himself, and young women on the prowl for young men, and faculty members ready to take young men and women under their wings... He'd celebrated his forty-fifth birthday with a whole circle of new comrades.
“I, uh, don't think any of us have made friends,” he said to Jhoe Freetz. “Not really. What sour old nuts we've all become!”
Jhoe cleared his throat, shuffled his foot. “I know what you mean. I know... It seems like it was once much easier, but then you wake up one day and realize you haven't made any new friends in a really long time. How does that happen?”
“I wouldn't know,” Tom said, with a lot less edge in his voice. “But I do welcome you to join us. Bad enough that Yezu and I have only each other for company.”
“Well then. I'll get a chair.”
“Please do,” said Yezu, his face firming up now that he knew Tom's mind. “You can play against me once I've crushed this gentleman here.”
Tom laughed, taking in the activity room with a broad glance. “You've mistaken this for one of your dreams, Yezu. Come back to reality and move your piece.”
Chapter Four
“Please, ladies and gentlemen,” One of the stewards called out, “form neat rows! Make room for your neighbors!”
The observation lounge had filled up rapidly, the good spots on couches and tables gone, and after them the good leaning-against spots on bulkheads and structural supports. Already, people here and there had begun to complain that they couldn't see, that they couldn't get comfortable, that somebody or other had elbowed them or stepped on their feet.
This last complaint seemed particularly petty, in light of the reduced gravity they enjoyed right now. The internal centrifuges had been eased off gradually, the room gimbals swinging nearly ninety degrees, keeping “down” perpendicular to the floors as Introspectia flipped tail to its destination and began, gently, to decelerate. But the thrust acceleration held things down with comforting though not troubling authority, and the locked 'fuges meant a clear, undizzying view from the portholes.
Here and there, homunculi wended through the leg-forests of the crowd, looking for things to clean up or carry away. But they seemed ill at ease, their movements sudden, ungraceful, poorly planned. Too many damn people in here, their sullen faces seemed to say.
Tom felt a little smug, seeing how he and Jhoe and Yezu had arrived here over five hours earlier. With the deceleration, they'd dropped back out of relativity's grip, and now you could once again see stars through the portholes. Three transparent but thick layers of diamond between you and them, of course, but you were really seeing the real thing, not a recording or simulation or other cheesy second-best.
So they had spent the hours sipping fruit-flavored intoxicants, and watching the stars drift slowly by as the ship made its turn. Shoals of gravitation drew near, the dancing, degenerate masses of Malhela system, and now Introspectia had to earn its keep, had to do something other than accelerate or coast along a straight-line course. This system was home to people, too, people who didn't like to have starship motors bathing their ships and planets in deadly radiation. Introspectia had squirted ahead a cautionary message last week, warning the Malhelans of the danger zones the ship would sweep through.
“The outer mass of the system should come into view in about two minutes,” the steward said, dutifully repeating what everyone already knew. Why else had they come here, to the observation lounge, come here on the mission at all? But Tom's drink-fuzzled mind couldn't muster up any real sense of annoyance. Let the man do his job.
The steward had brought silence, had caused all heads to turn in his direction. He seemed to bask in the attention. How often, after all, did he have such sights to point out?
“The object, known as Soleco by the inhabitants of this system, is a 'collapsar,' or 'black hole,' or 'hypermass,' consisting of a degenerate star approximately five times the mass of Earth's sun, which has been compressed almost to the diameter of the Earth itself. We're giving the object a wide berth, as it possesses a strong gravity gradient, or 'tidal force,' which could damage or even destroy Introspectia if we pass too near. Because the object's escape velocity exceeds the speed of light, Soleco absorbs light rather than radiating it, and will therefore not be directly visible. However, the object does possess a faint 'halo,' consisting of gas and du
st in close orbit around it. The halo is very faint, and gravitational doppler shift will cause it to appear reddish in color. We should also observe the effects of gravitational 'lensing,' as Soleco's pull will bend the rays of light passing near it.”
“How close will we be passing?” somebody asked.
The steward smiled faintly. His blue and gold uniform encased him stiffly, and suddenly he seemed a bit small inside of it. “I, uh, don't know. I can find out, if you like.”
“What does the name mean?” another voice from the crowd called out.
The steward relaxed. “Although the inhabitants of Malhela speak Lenglish just as you and I do, the original colonists used an extinct language called Esperanto to name objects and other features in the system. Because the outer hypermass orbits so far out from the system's other major bodies, the colonists chose to name it 'Soleco,' or 'loneliness.' Before you ask me how far out it is, don't, because I don't know that either.
“The colonists named the other collapsar 'hunger,' because it draws matter off the co-orbital white dwarf, known as 'futility.' The brown dwarf, primary to the only inhabited planet, is called Vano, or 'pride.' These other objects will be visible to us a little later.”
“I see it!” Someone shouted.
Fingers began to point.
“I see the hypermass!” “Soleco!” “The collapsar!”
Tom leaned forward in his seat. There, indeed, visible at the edge of one of the portholes! As promised, a dark puckering in the field of stars, a hidden mass greedily drawing all light and matter toward itself. He could see no reddish halo.
“Oh my,” said Yezu Manaka. “Oh my God. Long life or no, I never thought such a sight...”
“I don't see a halo,” Jhoe Freetz said. “Do you gentlemen see it, do you see a halo?”
“No,” Tom said to him without turning away from the view. “I... don't see anything, really.” He saw, really, a non-thing, an absence, wrapping the starlight around itself like some kind of blanket. It would wrap this ship around it, too, if it had the chance, stretching and squashing Introspectia like a bar of hot taffy.
