Swallow the Sky: A Space Opera (34 page)

“I hate to do it, but we will
have to destroy the original before we arrive. We need a rock-solid alibi.”

Another worry was the
fate of Juro’s starship. Carson assumed he had kept it at the edge of the solar
system, waiting for them to arrive like a spider in its web.

“Suppose there were other
crew aboard?” Aiyana asked.

“Yeah, I thought about
that, but it wasn’t Juro’s style. This was a super-secret operation. Besides,
if there were, once they realize the boss isn’t returning they’ll take off for
the other side of the galaxy.”

“And think about this”
Carson said warming to the idea, “if any of New Earth’s systems detected us
entering the solar system they’ll investigate and find Juro’s abandoned
starship. Case closed!”

The thought cheered him
up. Either way he suspected that the uproar generated by the contents of the Repository
would be so great it would be months before anyone took an interest in how it
had been found; by that time the trail would be cold.
We’re actually going
to get away with this
.

He was reading the
Arabian
Nights
when the ship pinged him.

“Some of the sensors in
the shuttle bay are failing – maybe Juro damaged them with his fake buggy. Could
you check it out?”

Carson pulled on his
environment suit and pushed through the exterior hatch. The bay was little more
than a tubular fold in the hull; one end opened to the vacuum while at the
other the buggy nestled in its dock.

Nothing seemed out of
order. He slid passed the little vessel and floated to the rear of the enclosure.
The rear wall had a brown smear. What the hell was that? He moved closer. It
seemed to be some kind of corrosion, but hull composite never corroded.

Then, as he watched, the
stain spread. Small pieces flaked off, drifted to other areas of the hull, and
began growing anew. Carson backed away, his mouth open with horror. It was the
Melt.

Carson stumbled through the hatch ripping off his
environment suit.

“Destroy it completely”
he shouted stuffing it into an incinerator. “It’s the goddam Melt! It must have
been Juro; the madman didn’t protect his shuttle.”

“We will have to jettison
part of the hull” the ship said. “Carson, locate the main connectors and…”

It was too late. On the
outside where the temperature was just a few degrees above absolute zero the
rogue nanobots could only reproduce at a snail’s rate – they drew their power
from the energy of the surrounding environment. But a few must have attached
themselves to his environment suit and followed him into the main cabin. As he
watched the contamination spread across the wall, structures crumbling wherever
it touched.

Aiyana rushed into the
cabin. “What is it?”

“Get out!” Carson
screamed. “We have to abandon the ship.”

But they could not, the
logical part of his brain told him. The Melt started in the shuttle bay. By now
the buggy would be inoperative. Besides, where could they go in the depths of
interstellar space?

He screamed again. A
stain had appeared on the leg of Aiyana’s flight suit. It grew as he watched. He
pushed towards her then found his breath seizing up. For a moment his vision
blurred; when he refocused he discovered that he could no longer move. Helpless,
he revolved through the cabin, finally colliding with the wall. All he could do
was watch the ship dissolve around him. Aiyana floated two meters away. She too
appeared paralyzed.

“
What is happening? My workers are dying!
”
Tallis wailed.

“It is the Melt” the ship
said calmly. “We believe it entered with Juro.”

Well at least one of
us isn’t panicking
he thought.
Not that it will do any good.

Carson knew that he was a
dead man – the Melt had undoubtedly entered his body. How long would it take? At
least there was no pain.
The one mercy
it was called; as nerve-endings
dissolved all feeling ceased.

He tried to look at
Aiyana but he could not move his head.
Poor thing, to die so young
. After
so long a life he could hardly complain, but to lose her, to lose Tallis and
the ship… His vision began to blur again, filling the cabin with pearly light.

And the Repository
.
He felt like a vandal. For eight thousand years it had waited for someone to
come, and then he arrived and within days the story of old Earth was
annihilated.

But worse would follow. Eventually
the Melt would consume the whole ship. Once the giant superconducting magnets
that controlled the shell were destroyed the micro black holes would fly off into
space, dropping a ball of nanobots into normal space-time just as the ship
entered the Eridani system.

Juro had got his wish, or
rather the Melt had, for Carson now had little doubt about who was in control. The
old man’s insane scheme to use nanotechnology as a weapon, his reckless flight
to Sol; Juro thought he was the puppet master but in reality he was the puppet.
Somehow the Melt had pulled the strings across the light years, and now it was
free of its prison, free to eat a million worlds.

The light in the cabin
continued to grow brighter. Carson squinted, a shape was appearing, coalescing
into the form of a human being.
It’s got into my brain
.
This is an
hallucination; we are travelling at superluminal speed, nothing could have
entered the ship.

Now the shape was quite
solid. It appeared to be a humanoid – a tall, pale woman, long red hair rippling
around her shoulders as if she were underwater. She was naked, but in a
strangely sexless way like a statue;

and she was singing.

Carson recognized the music,
it was from an entertainment called
The Marriage of Figaro
that he had
found in the Repository just the day before.

I am kinder: I will say Yes.

Then let us all be happy.

The song came at the end
of the
opera
, a moment of peace when all conflict had been resolved, and
it was possibly the most divine thing he had ever heard. The light intensified
as the angelic figure raised her arms.

“Blessings to you dear
ship, loyal servant” she said.

Now the light was so
intense it hurt his eyes.

“Great Queen, save us from the horror!”
It was Tallis’s voice.

The light dimmed. The
Angel opened her hands. Countless intense points of light burst from the
upturned palms like a blizzard caught in searchlights. One floated by Carson’s
face. It was a perfect miniature of the humanoid, no taller than a centimeter. It
spun about and took off in the direction of the Conservatory.

“Blessings to you dear Tallis,
tireless mother”

What language was she speaking?
The voice was high-pitched and musical, and although the words were understandable,
they slipped and slided in his mind.

“Carson,” said the ship,
“something extraordinary is happening.”

No kidding
said
some part of his dying brain.
It can’t be long now
he thought, the Melt
would be burrowing into the bowels of the vessel. The life-support systems
would fail very soon, although they would be dead before that happened.

As gracefully as any
amoeba, the Angel slid into two.

“Blessings to you, brave,
strong Aiyana” said one of the figures as she floated towards her.

The other approached
Carson. The closer it got the less human it appeared. The skin was the surface
of a star; beneath its glowing surface was energy, complexity, and power.

He could see every detail
of the flowing hair, somehow the strands had
meaning
, as delicate and
precise as polynomial equations.

“Blessings to you dear
Carson, may your search never end”

Now the face was only
centimeters away from his. Carson peered into the eyes and saw that they were not
eyes, they were worlds. It was the Earth of ten thousand years ago, a
nourishing blue sphere overflowing with life; if he looked closely enough he
would see every creature on the planet.

Looking at the face that
was not a face he knew that everything could be understood; he could join the
Angel in
Anandatandava
, the blissful dance, the dance of life, the dance
of all that is possible.

“Are you God?” he
whispered.

The Angel smiled and for
a moment became more human.

“God is love” she said,
and kissed him.

Unable to see, Carson
felt himself rushing upwards.

“There are gifts” said
the Angel’s voice and then everything was silent.

Salt water rushed into
his mouth as a wave broke over his head. Carson chocked, spat, and started
swimming. He pulled himself up and tried to look above the waves, squinting
against sunlight broken into a million shards. The water was turbulent but
deliciously warm; overhead was a thin smear of cirrus clouds tracking across an
azure sky. He was naked, alone in an ocean.
What the hell?

Spinning round he could
see a dark landmass on the horizon, too distant to reveal any detail, but fifty
meters away was an immensely reassuring sight: the buggy bobbing on its
floatation tanks. Was he really alone? He lurched upwards again slapping
seawater from his face.

“Hey, over here!”

Aiyana no more than ten
meters away. Carson let out a whoop and splashed through the waves to where she
was swimming. They clutched each other, his mouth finding hers, and kissed for
what seemed a lifetime treading water in the unknown sea. He knew if he lived
for another thousand years he would never be happier than that moment, holding
her secure and safe in his arms.

“What happened? Where are
we?” she said.

“No idea – I think Juro
slipped us some kind of hallucinogenic drug. I got this crazy idea that the
ship was invaded by the Melt and some sort of angelic figure appeared.”

“Me too!”

He frowned. Shared
hallucinations? This was getting really weird.

“Are we on New Earth?” Aiyana
asked.

“I don’t think so, the
sun doesn’t seem right and I’m not getting any traffic on the Net.”

“Let’s ask the buggy”

But before they could return
to the little vessel a streamlined craft sliced through the sky above them, losing
altitude as it executed a wide turn. Finally it settled into the water nearby,
the hatch peeling open to reveal a solitary figure.

“How did I know it would
be you two?”

It was Officer Asima
wearing her official black birthday suit. Carson jerked his head round and looked
again at the island on the horizon; no wonder there was something familiar
about it. They were on Kaimana and it had stopped raining.

“People are simply
calling it The Miracle” said Asima.

They were huddled inside
the security craft’s cabin, Carson and Aiyana wrapped in blankets from the
emergency kit.

“Twenty-seven days ago
Mita’s output increased by two percent in the course of an hour. It was just
enough to burn off the cloud layer. But a clear atmosphere loses more heat to
outer space so the surface temperature has stayed the same. It’s an
extraordinary balancing act.”

“And now you appear” she
added, “this must be the month for miracles.”

“Yeah, how did you find
us?”

“Instinct – I received
two simultaneous reports – one said a starship had mysteriously appeared in
orbit around the planet and the other that there was an unknown shuttlecraft in
the ocean. It just had to be you guys, strange things just happen around you.”

Carson was beginning to
think she was right. Starships do not go into orbit. Accelerating something as
massive as a shell in regular space-time required titanic quantities of energy.

“We have a hell of a lot
to talk about but first I must get to my buggy.”

“Alright” Asima said
cautiously, “but you are staying...”

“I promise. We’ve had more
than enough dramatic exits.”

The security officer
maneuvered her vehicle next to the little craft so that Carson could jump
through the open hatch. Inside he found two folded flight suits. Had they taken
them off before going for a swim?

“When did we leave?” he
asked.

“I have no idea. Sorry
Carson, I seem to have had a complete systems failure; I booted up about twenty
minutes ago. I’m running diagnostics right now.”

He opened a channel to
the ship but it was equally ignorant.

“Same for me –unprecedented
systems loss – last thing I remember is we were en route to New Earth. But that
was only six hours ago – how did we get here so fast?”

Carson blinked.
“Strange
things just happen around you…”