Tales of the Continuing Time and Other Stories

by Moran, Daniel Keys

  Bodhi had missed the Gate at Eloise, his first four tries at entry. At .98C the insertion beam had to sync the Gate perfectly on the first try. If he missed, the Shivering Bastard would be a hundred thousand kilometers past the Gate by the time the insertion beam could be resynchronized.

  It did not seem to Bodhi that he was taking excessively long. Time shrank as he approached lightspeed, and in his time only about ten hours passed as he accelerated to make his pass at the Gate, and another ten as he missed and decelerated to zero. But he knew it was not so; in the Continuing Time at large days passed with each approach and with each deceleration.

  There was a deadline to his attempts: one of the House of November’s precious few tachyon starships, the Reeny Ihr, was en route to Devnet, and was due to arrive there in sixty-eight days.

  It was not until Bodhi’s fifth pass, twenty-seven days after beginning, that Eloise’s Third Gate, entryway to the long tunnel to Devnet, opened at Bodhisattva’s approach, and swallowed the Shivering Bastard.

  WHEN DEVNET FELL silent; when ship after ship of the November Guard failed to return after entering the long tunnel to Devnet; and when the famous, formidable Wizard refused for reasons of her own to try and find out what had gone wrong; then P’Rythan, recently Lord of the House of November, was forced to a choice she despised.

  In truth she had no options. Though universe is a dangerous place, the House of November is not prone to overreacting. And yet the Luciferean System, November’s System, is tunneled to Eloise, and Eloise is tunneled to Devnet, and danger only two Gates away was danger the House of November could not tolerate.

  Had she been younger, or held a different post, P’Rythan might have gone herself; she was a woman of considerable talents, who had been taught by Ola Blue herself. But she was also Lord of the House of November; and so, for only the sixth time since 2294, when it assumed control of the planet whose name it shared, the House of November sought outside aide. P’Rythan November sent an envoy to Sol, to Earth, to America, to California, to the city of Van Nuys, to the headquarters of a certain ancient organization; and there a Captain of the November Guard presented P’Rythan’s request for the aid of the Pinkerton Agent called Bodhisattva Tan.

  IN A TIME when some of the living had once been machines, and some machines had once lived, where the body a being wore might not have been the sex or the species it was born to, it was known that Bodhisattva was a man in the old style; born human, male, genetically unreconstructed. He was of below average height by modern standards. His eyes and skin were brown and his hair was black and it was said he could not change the color of any of them without help from dyes or lenses.

  Some things were general knowledge; the Source would tell you, if you asked it. It was known that Bodhi had never had biosculpture, and that, though he maintained a form lean and muscular in the modern style, the maintenance took him an hour a day working out in high gee on the gravity jungle aboard his ship. There were a dozen fine immune management nanosystems Bodhi could have had installed that would have taken over the job of maintaining his muscles for him; but Bodhi, as he had explained in a rare public statement forty years prior, did not trust such systems and saw no reason to deprive himself of workouts he enjoyed.

  It was assumed that he ran one of the better defensive immune systems; in his line of work it would be critical. But no one really knew.

  DEVNET SYSTEM IS notable for two things; its small colony of Novembri is not one of them. There are twelve Gates at Devnet, twelve entry points into the web of spacelace tunnels that link the stars together. In 2677, over five hundred years after the end of the war with the sleem, humanity knows of only two larger clusters. The system in which the planet Tin Woodman is located has thirteen; and a pair of black holes, orbiting one another near the Galactic Core, have thirty-one.

  The other notable thing about Devnet is the tunnel upon which its Third Gate opens. Its is one of the four Ridiculously Long tunnels humanity knows of in the Continuing Time. Its transit time is eight years, and it connects Devnet System with a red dwarf on the other side of the Galactic Core, sixty thousand light years from Earth.

  The Shivering Bastard broke into real space through Devnet System’s First Gate. Bodhi, awaiting the event in the relative comfort of the Bastard’s observation bubble, had an inhumanly brief impression of impossible glare, and then found himself in blackness. The impression of glare had not come from his organic eyes, but from the tap the Shivering Bastard used to feed him information.

  Well, said Bodhi, that was interesting.

  The Shivering Bastard said, Yes. We think –

  The observation bubble cleared. Bodhi looked upon a universe shifted blue in one direction, red in another. Though different stars were visible, and odd patches of space glowed bright blue with the stepped-up infrared from warm dust clouds, it did not otherwise look much different from what he was used to; in the direction of his travel stellar radio waves shifted up into visible light, and stellar gamma radiation, chasing him from behind, dropped down into his visible spectrum.

  – we were hit with a hell of a laser. The Bastard paused, and then said, Or perhaps not.

  Already two million klicks away from Devnet’s First Gate, heading inSystem at near lightspeed, the Shivering Bastard’s scopes peered backward. Bodhi examined their red-shifted image, transmitted via his tap directly into his mind, with interest.

  Parabolic mirrors ... nine of them; Bodhi had no way of guessing their size.

  About four hundred klicks in diameter, said the Bastard. We think we know what happened to the ships the November Guard sent through.

  At the focal points of the nine parabolic mirrors sat Devnet’s First Gate; where the reflections of those mirrors met was a region hotter than the surface of most stars. A ship coming through the Gate at the usual velocity of only a few hundred kilometers per hour ... Bodhi shivered at the thought.

  The picture came clear slowly. Ship’s scopes sought the positions of the other eleven Gates, and found eleven of the twelve basking in the warmth of Devnet’s mirrored regard. Only one Gate was not so protected; and Bodhi’s instant guess – the Third Gate, opening on the ridiculously long tunnel – was correct.

  Yes, said the Bastard, perhaps guessing Bodhi’s guess; she knew him well. Whoever did this came a long way for it. The other side of the galaxy.

  Perhaps, said Bodhi. Or perhaps they just want us to think so. Let’s proceed inSystem for now. We still don’t know what’s happened to Ugly.

  InSystem, a small Marslike planet, Ugly-On-A-Ball, orbited the star Devnet at a distance of one hundred and sixty-five million kilometers. Three centuries of terraforming had not changed Ugly much. The air was breathable by humans, but just barely; the House of November had come to Devnet System for its Gates, not out of any interest in its real estate.

  That he had found himself heading generally inSystem pleased Bodhi; the odds had been somewhat against it. The November Guard had been unable to tell Bodhi exactly what direction Devnet’s First Gate faced; under ordinary circumstances, when craft entered or left the Gate at only a few hundred kilometers per hour, it was hardly relevant. They had crowdsourced recollections to no avail. (A video from a centuries past transit had been dug up; it showed the Gate pointed off the ecliptic. But Gates drifted, and there was no guarantee it would point that direction today.)

  Aside from the ninety-nine mirrors, the System might never have been visited by intelligence. The Shivering Bastard monitored no radio, no video, no net; saw no ships. Bodhi sat cross-legged in free fall, in loose clothing that drifted around him. In a crystal bubble, surrounded by a bright starry sky, he ghosted through a System gone silent.

  Bodhisattva’s thoughts were troubled. The tech necessary to
mount mirrors of this size and number, across the length of a solar system, in the brief time since Devnet had fallen silent, was beyond anything in his experience. He doubted the sleem, humanity’s foes since its discovery of the tachyon star drive, could have done it. Once probably, at the height of their power – but not today, broken and scattered as they were across the galaxy.

  He consulted the Alternities Catalog of Intelligent Spacegoing Species, and came up with only a few possibilities, and none he liked. The Zaradin Church perhaps had the capability – and to be sure, Bodhi’s distrust of the Church ran deep – but it would be wildly out of character. Even if it did not drag them into a general war with humanity, an act like this would make human governments even more unfriendly to the Church than they already were, if that was possible. The Tamranni were a possibility of sorts – but there were Tamranni upon November itself, and while Bodhi presumed that the ancient Tamranni could have done such a thing as he saw before him, he doubted very much that they would have. One of the older and larger Platformer Caravans rounded out Bodhi’s short list of possibles; again he thought it unlikely. Though a given Caravan might have managed to set these mirrors, all the Caravans humanity had ever encountered, taken together, could not have survived war with the mighty House of November –

  – and whoever did this, thought Bodhi with a certain grim weariness, is going to have to.

  Unlike planets, Gates are relatively stationary with respect to the stars to which they are anchored; by a quirk of timing, Ugly’s orbit had taken it to the side of Devnet almost directly opposite its First Gate. The Shivering Bastard climbed up above the ecliptic and aimed its telescopes in the direction of Ugly. It took the Bastard a moment to find the planet, even knowing where it was supposed to be; Devnet’s First Gate is 8.3 light hours distant from Devnet itself, nine billion kilometers distant.

  Ugly was a molten rock.

  Bodhi exhaled slowly. That he had expected it did not make seeing it any easier. At the distance, all that was visible was the planet’s heat, but that was sufficient; the planet radiated into space at a temperature of 2,500 degrees Centigrade. It had never had much of an atmosphere, and now had none.

  Ugly it might have been, but within the last ninety days – less than a quarter past – thirty-four million Novembri, human and otherwise, had been alive upon its surface.

  We’ve been noticed, the Bastard announced.

  Bodhi did not stir; the image from the scope still trained upon the unguarded Third Gate came alive in his awareness. Five craft, of a design unfamiliar to Bodhi, boosted from the Third Gate, chasing the Shivering Bastard. The Third Gate was six light minutes distant from the First, off to one side of the Shivering Bastard’s inbound vector. Bodhi ran the numbers quickly: … the Shivering Bastard’s light, leaving the First Gate, arrives at the Third Gate six minutes later. Automated equipment at the Third Gate establishes a vector and launches intercept craft … some seven minutes later the image of their launch reaches us....

  It took the Bastard a moment to calculate vectors – They’ll have a hard time catching us, said the Bastard. A stern chase is a long chase. But we think they know that. We think they’re trying to make sure we don’t reach one of the gates. The Bastard paused, analyzing. We think we’ll make the Sixth Gate, beyond Ugly. If circumstances allow, we’ll decelerate before making our pass at the Gate. If we miss the Gate we’re fucked. We’ll head out into interstellar space, and they’ll send missiles after us, and one of them will get us. The Bastard paused. Okay. We have a vector for them. They’re boosting at 232 gravities. Theoretical max for gravity compensation, for ships of their estimated mass, is 216 gees. If their gravity compensation is perfectly implemented, they’re boosting under sixteen gees. Assuming their compensation is imperfect, but better than ours – likely – their compensation is perhaps 195 to 200 gees, which means they’re boosting at thirty-two to thirty-seven gravities effective.

  The conclusion was obvious; nothing biological could have survived such acceleration. Those ships are being piloted by a Machine Intelligence.

  The reaction time alone made that clear; they boosted after us within fifteen seconds of catching our light. The interesting thing is that their hardware is considerably better than ours, said the Bastard pointedly. At thirty-two gees sustained acceleration, several of the Shivering Bastard’s systems would suffer noticeable degradation.

  If you can tell me where to buy hardware like theirs, said Bodhi mildly, I’ll get it for you.

  Suggestion of a smile; she went so far as to tell a joke, an old one. We’ll keep our eye open.

  The Eye That Never Sleeps is the symbol of the Pinkerton Security Agency, the source of the ancient phrase “private eye.”

  The Eye itself was displayed on the Shivering Bastard’s hull.

  Neither of them mentioned Ugly.

  SUBJECTIVELY IT TOOK the Shivering Bastard twenty-two minutes to cross the System. In the outer world ten hours passed. Bodhi kept a telescope on the alien craft that followed him, but aside from that paid them no attention; their tech might be better than his, but physical law is the same for everyone, and unless he missed the Sixth Gate on his first approach they had no chance of catching him.

  He scanned the records for Imhota instead, the System to which Devnet’s Sixth Gate led. The Sixth Gate opened on a long tunnel that ran 812 light years, at nearly right angles to the galactic plane. The tunnel itself was a twenty-two day transit. Imhota looked like nothing spectacular; a small human colony, allied to the House of November and dependent upon it for protection, though not a November colony proper as Devnet had been. Bodhi hoped the colony was still there, and doubted they would be. Ugly looked like the opening act of war to him. Imhota had three Gates, all well off the ecliptic; Devnet’s Sixth Gate linked to Imhota’s Second. Bodhi accessed records and was pleased; most of Imhota’s shipping ran through its First and Third Gates, which were nodes on a minor Platformer Caravan circuit. It meant that there would probably be relatively few spacecraft around the Second Gate; which meant that if the Shivering Bastard came blasting out of the Second Gate at some fraction of lightspeed, she would probably survive.

  And if we do hit something, Bodhi thought, at least we’ll never know it.

  From Imhota, assuming transit of Imhota System went well – assuming they got out of Devnet System alive – Bodhi would need to transit six Gates, five tunnels and one long tunnel, to reach November again.

  It would take him forty-three days.

  NINE MIRRORS FOCUSED upon Devnet’s Sixth Gate, as upon all gates except its Third. The Shivering Bastard sent missiles running ahead of her as she decelerated. The mirrors were designed to collect Devnet’s light; they could not be expected to withstand the onslaught of half a dozen anti-matter missiles.

  They did not. When the shock waves of the explosions had passed they saw that only two of the mirrors still stood. The Shivering Bastard decelerated to the extent that she dared. She could transit the Gate at a much reduced velocity now, and still survive the heat of the remaining mirrors. They hit the Gate at .⁠38C –

  – and what had taken four tries back at Eloise, took one at Devnet. They made entry on the first pass and the spacelace tunnel opened up and swallowed them.

  THE TUNNEL’S WALLS pressed in upon the Shivering Bastard, surrounding her like an organic thing. Had Bodhi cleared the observation bubble for viewing, he would have been shown a seething gray storm of lines and spheres enclosing his starship.

  He kept the bubble opaque; he had seen it before, and it was vaguely disturbing.

  The Shivering Bastard had dinner with him in the observation bubble. Bodhi dined on wild rice, sauteed with mushrooms and almonds in a spiced wine sauce, and drank two bottle
s – actual bottles made of glass – of a black beer brewed long ago, on a world that was today as much a cinder as Ugly. The Shivering Bastard animated the body of a young human woman whom Bodhi found attractive. For the evening she spoke in the first person, and answered to the name of Beyta Arcadia, and pretended to be someone Bodhi had never met before. If he had known the Bastard had taken the personality from an ancient novel, it would have lessened his enjoyment in her company, and so she sensibly did not burden him with the information.

  She had no particular reaction to the half hour, subjective time, that they had spent in the Devnet System. They had beaten the odds once again. Some day, she knew with a cold, inhuman certainty, the odds would beat them.

  As for Bodhi himself – well, she observed that he relaxed noticeably during his second beer. He did not offer to discuss the near-certain war that would come of the slaughter at Ugly, or speculate on the identity of those responsible; the Bastard did not bring it up.

  She did not hold Bodhi’s reaction against him; he was human, with human strengths and human weaknesses, including a fear of death. It did not seem to affect his functioning in a crisis; as Bodhi himself had once put it to a client, “I’m professionally incapable of being rattled, my friend.” The Shivering Bastard knew that he often told clients that; it seemed to reassure them. “I am, by damn, a Pinkerton Man.”

  END

  A Son Enters, Stage Right

  2681

  KESS WU RAN for his life through the Forest of Final Dawn.

  He wasn’t frightened much by the Wu Li behind him. He was faster than they were, unaugmented, and he wore fifty-year-old November Guard battle armor that was better than anything the Wu Li had shown in the two years since the invasion: it made him faster yet and protected him against the caliber of impact weapons the Wu Li carried.