Interzone #244 Jan - Feb 2013 (15 page)

Somerton’s pad beeped as it displayed a message from Axon. It was a crude way of communicating, but only Mariam and Victor had the complex web of sensory fibres and high-speed electromagnetic receivers and transmitters that enabled communication at the most intimate cerebral level. He flicked his finger across the pad to enable voice input.

“Totally impossible,” he said. “The only biological entities allowed onto the ship are Mariam and Victor, and you know that.”

Alarms at various pitches and volumes shrieked and warning lights lit up the monitoring panels around Axon. The lift’s steady point eight G rise stopped as emergency overrides kicked in. Panicking engineers frantically released their harnesses and struggled awkwardly in what was now severely reduced gravity.

As suddenly as it started, the violent noise stopped and the warning lights returned to green. Somerton’s pad beeped again.

“We are in command of the ship, not you. It is simple. It is safe. It is necessary. You will help me with this tiny kindness, or the ship is going nowhere. Axon.
”

Nearby, Victor laughed. Axon was sharing this with him, but not Mariam. Somerton thumbed his panel and was not amused. At the weightless point where the spoke entered the axial tunnel the lift entered a zone where ‘up’ and ‘down’ were meaningless, and changed to what could well be described as ‘along’, traversing the axis inside a smaller tube within the larger.

At the end of the axial tube airlock doors opened and the lift slid into the lock and stopped. Hatches in the walls of the lift opened, revealing ranks of white pressure suits. They began to pull them on, awkward in the low gravity. Tell-tales flashed amber and then green on each suit. All but Mariam and Victor clipped tethering ropes to cleats on the floor.

“Mariam – Victor – clip your tethers on,” Julia said.

“Axon says not to bother,” they responded as one voice. Somerton frowned and then decided to say nothing. Satisfied that all suits were safe, the lift lit a sign saying
depressurising
and the air was sucked out of both the airlock and the lift. The sign changed to
vacuum
and the doors opened onto the sight of a cylindrical docking bay the size of a dozen cathedrals. In the distance, shuttles of many kinds and sizes were clamped into bays around the internal circumference. The great circular eye of the dock was open – shutters folded back outside like petals of dark grey radiation-blocking metal and plastic. Hanging in front of them exactly fifty metres away was a box-like silver shape – one of the ship’s non-atmosphere cargo transports. Away in the distance that gigantic form of the ship was a brilliant ellipse in the angled light of Angelus XI.

The transport steadily moved closer, robot arms extending ready to grasp Axon and its support tanks.

“No need to wait for me,” Axon said, the tone unusually cheerful. “Step out of the door – I have you.”

The two sixteen-year-olds fought to overcome their fear of falling and stepped slowly out of the lift door. Jets on their suits moved them out into the hangar, and they were turning to face the door of the lift and the figures floating inside and around it on their tethers.

“I think it is customary to wave,” Axon said. So they waved, and the anonymous space suits waved back. And then they were accelerating, out of the hangar, past the incoming transport and into space, racing towards the ship. Victor was not happy, but Axon could feel the smile on Mariam’s face.

“I love it,” she said. “It’s like swimming! Star diving!”

So Axon took her in a series of loops, dives, spin-turns and crazy corkscrews around the unwaveringly straight track of Victor, who would have white-knuckle gripped the arm-rests of whatever seat he was riding on, but there was no seat and no arm-rests. Behind them the transport entered the dock; a telescopic arm extended into the lift and, attaching to Axon’s support platform pulled the protected, but still fragile, cargo of biology into its hold.

And so the months of training began. The command deck of the ship was in the centre of the egg-like structure, surrounded by layers of decks and parks. The thick outer shell was hollow and filled with its own skins of radiation-damping liquid hydrogen, polyethylene and water. Each of the ‘floors’ of the one hundred and twenty eight decks was made of a hybrid of concrete and tailored plastic.

Not many tissue-damaging particles were going to get through to the yolk at the heart of the ship.

The deck was a sphere of seamless 3D display panels, punctuated by some hatches to the living quarters and the chamber which held Axon and its support systems. Four couches were attached on gimbals to a central column.

“Why four?”

“Did you think they
’d build something this big just for you?”

Mariam and Victor had explored many areas of the ship, but most of it was secured and Axon refused to open the whole vastness on the inarguable grounds that many sectors were mothballed, and it would be a waste of energy to open them merely for pleasure trips.

“You have diagrams, schematics, 3D models, images – what more do you want?”

“I like to touch things,” Mariam answered. But on their birthday, when they had been greeted with a tuneless rendition of ‘Happy Birthday To You’ over a video link to base, Axon summoned them both to the control room and issued some instructions. Victor, he sent to a newly-unlocked Virtual Reality games centre, where he spent eight hours slaying Hell-Spawn with a variety of swords, axes, razor-whips, soul-wands, fire-bolts and other hard and soft weapons, and discovered that a rail-gun is of absolutely no use against Undead Wraiths, although average Zombies could be fragged quite successfully.

Mariam followed her plan and navigated a maze of corridors and jump tubes until she reached a door with an illuminated red sign above it –
NOT AVAILABLE
. Then, as she was close to the door, the sign changed to a green heart and vanished. The door whispered open. She walked through into a chamber filled with sunlight. Surrounded by low grassy hillocks, a blue lake gleamed and rippled. Dragonflies darted over the water. House Martins swooped low over the surface, the blue reflecting on their pale breasts and making them seem exotic and rare.

She followed a narrow path to a strangely familiar rock jutting out over the lake, peeled off her clothes and followed the birds in a graceful dive. Under water she swam strongly and suddenly was in the centre of a host of silver fish, darting and flocking.

“Are these real fish?” she thought at Axon.

“They
’re not just real fish, Mariam. They’re your fish.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Ask Victor. Dr Somerton was most displeased.”

Mariam thought a giant smile, and took only the briefest of breaths before diving again and again amongst the flickering, shining creatures.

* *

After they’d eaten
their supper in what was called the crew mess, Axon said, “You must both go immediately to level five, corridor seven, room seventeen.”

“Why?” Victor demanded.

“These are not my instructions. I have no idea.”

Twenty minutes later they walked into a dome-like chamber with curiously-textured non-reflective walls. Seats faced a series of display panels. As soon as they entered, the doors closed and the lights dimmed.

The big central 3D display lit up and Julia appeared. “There’s no need to be alarmed,” she said. “This presentation is pre-recorded and will take one hour. Whilst in this room you will not be able to access Axon and he will have no access to you. You are of age now, and will soon know everything.”

Julia walked away and Somerton stepped into view.

“For over fifty years now,” he began, “we humans have tried to reach beyond the confines of our galactic arm. All but one attempt has failed, and that exception is not a happy story. Victor, you’re fond of asking ‘Why?’ and that’s the easiest of questions to answer. In four hundred years’ time a dense ball of dark matter eight light years in diameter will fly through our local systems. The gravitational consequences will be devastating. Stars will collide. Planets will fall into their suns or be flung into the outer darkness. Nothing can survive. Many such catastrophes have happened in the history of the universe, but this will be our catastrophe. Our only hope is to escape it, destroy it, or deflect it.

“This information is not known by many. The truth behind it has been systematically discredited for centuries. Scientists have been persuaded into public scepticism, sent into exile, or even killed. Yes – killed.

“Long ago people thought the end of the Earth could be escaped by building ark ships, and we have inhabited planets around seventeen nearby stars. But now, that seems futile. None can evade the invisible destruction which is coming.

“No human mind can control a ship like yours. We cannot build computers complex enough to do so. Consequently, we started to harness the billion-year work of evolution – we began to build larger and larger biological brains. Most of these have failed. One did not – but an error caused it to die of an infection, stranding its ship and crew ninety-seven light years away.

“Your first mission is to rescue that ship and what it contains, which is vital for the survival of the human race. You will be briefed in more detail on that later. In the meantime, Axon trusts you, but you must be very careful. If you need to discuss things only between yourselves, come into this room.”

* *

Mariam lay awake
in her cabin. Sleep refused to come. The simulations had come to an end, and the first real flight, their first defiance of the universe’s unfeeling indifference, was only twelve hours away. Restlessly, her hand strayed across her breasts, her nipples stiffening under her fingers, and then slid slowly down her stomach.

“It
’s nice when you do that.”

“Go away Axon, This is private.”

“Victor does it too.”

“I don’t want to know.”

“I think you do. It’s different, but similar. Sometimes he goes very fast, sometimes very slowly. Like you. I know what he thinks about. Shall I tell you?”

“No.”

“He thinks about lying beside you, touching and kissing. He thinks about your breasts. He thinks about you opening to him. Don’t you, Victor?”

A long mental pause, and then Victor’s thought voice: “Yes. Yes, I do.”

“So does Mariam. Don’t you, Mariam?”

Mariam’s fingers were wet. “It is forbidden,” she thought at them. “We are brother and sister.”

“That’s what they told you. It’s not true. You are from different gene pools. They modified a few things to make you look alike. There is no reason why you should not share your sexual feelings with each other. Even if you didn’t know it, you have shared them with me. Perhaps that was part of the plan.”

Mariam rolled off the bed, pulled a shift over her head and left the cabin. Down the corridor, she opened Victor’s room without going in, said, “Isolation room. Now!” and continued walking.

“I don’t like it when you go in there. Why do you want to cut me out?”

“Do you understand the word ‘private’?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t think you do.” She went into the isolation room and the door closed behind her. Soon after, Victor came in, looking flushed and embarrassed.

“Why do you think Axon is suddenly so interested in our sex lives?” she asked. “Why now?”

“No idea.”

“Control. He’s looking for ways to control us. So either Axon’s lying or Julia and the others have lied to us. I think we need to find out.”

Ten minutes later a sleepy Julia came on line and gave them the answer. Axon was telling the truth. “You should have told us!” Victor shouted. “What else does Axon know that we don’t know?”

“We thought it was best for all three of you. I’m sorry if we were wrong.”

As they were about to leave the room Mariam stepped in front of Victor. “If ever…if we ever…in here and nowhere else. Agree?” Victor nodded, and she went on: “Okay. Truth time. We have to know if Axon’s using us for some hidden reason. So…when you…do you really think about me?”

He nodded slowly and looked away, whispering, “Sorry.”

Mariam smiled and said, “Stop saying sorry. For some reason I’m not surprised. Perhaps I…well, to be fair, I should confess too. I often wonder what it would be like to touch you there. It’s going to take a bit of getting used to.”

“I know why they did it. They wanted to create a bond we couldn’t break.”

“I think those come in several flavours.”

“I still love you, sis.”

“And I still love you, brother.” And then they burst into laughter. “There’s one thing, though. If you’re going to be my lover instead of my brother you’re going to have to be a whole lot nicer to me.”

Then she kissed him on the cheek, ruffled his hair, and went off to her cabin to sleep.

* *

For twenty-six
hours the reaction-mass engines accelerated the ship away from the containment wordlet and the star Angelus XI, with its rocky planets and settlements. Mariam and Victor took four hour shifts, and Axon ‘slept’ for the last twelve hours whilst unconscious, massively-parallel processes assessed the constant data from the arsenal of sensors as they probed the space ahead of them at a deep level for a distance of many light years. Finally, the words they’d heard a thousand times in simulations rang out: “Impulse engine shutdown in five seconds.” A pause for breath, and then the steady two-G push ceased. “All ready?” In the strange ordering of things evolved over seventeen years it was necessary for all three consciousnesses to agree before radical action could be taken. Three thought yeses committed them.