The Braided World (46 page)

“Yes,” Anton said. “That was a yes.”

He reached for the whiskey bottle.

Nick took a deep breath, looking into Spence Norval's face. Spence was loosening his bonds. But was he really? Nick knew that he sometimes saw things that weren't real. It was the stress, the stress of the universe's unraveling.

Spence was saying that the
Restoration
wasn't going home after all. That Anton had decided to stay For a moment Nick was relieved that they weren't going to bring the infected DNA home. But a problem still remained: the drone and its packet of information about the riches found, the answer to Earth's problems. So Earth would send another ship, and then it would begin all over again, the nightmare. No, the folks back home needed to remember that the
Restoration
had pursued the signal and never been heard from again.

Spence was swearing under his breath, fumbling with the code on the restraint locks that bound Nick to the bunk.

“Who's with us, then?” Nick asked.

“Lupe for sure. She'll meet us on the flight deck. First we commandeer the arms locker. By that time she'll have more people with her. The ones who want to go home.”

“Where's Anton?” Nick asked.

“On the flight deck with Webb.” He stopped for a moment, searching Nick's eyes. “You said Anton has got to be stopped, right? You're with us on this, Nick?”

He hated to lie to Spence—the man meant well. But he didn't know the things Nick knew.

“We'll stop him,” Nick said. “Stop him cold. It's what Captain Darrow … would have done.” He didn't want to discuss how Captain Darrow was still around. Unless he was a phantom. It didn't matter, though. The rest was true, about how once the genomes were brought home, were cloned, they'd revert to Dassa form.

“Give me a gun, Spence.”

The restraints sprang free, and Nick was struggling to his feet. A small pistol came into his hand. Spence looked at him. “Don't fire on the crew. Just Webb and the captain.”

Nick nodded.
Just kill the fat sergeant and the thin captain. Got it.
Spence turned to the cabin door to check the ship corridor.

Behind him, Nick brought the gun up and hit Spence on the skull. The man crumpled.

At the door, he listened for sounds in the corridor, then slipped out, moving quickly, with more energy than he'd had in weeks. It was finally coming to the point—the point of his life, of his death.

Scrambling down the ladder to mid-deck, Nick thanked his luck that there were only a handful of able-bodied crew walking the decks. The ship was big and empty now, big as a mausoleum with the dead and the near dead aboard.

At the hold, he yanked a release, then pulled up the hatchway from the floor and slipped down onto the bulkhead ladder. He pulled the hatch shut, and descended.

There was the science module off to starboard, and to port, the hold, now pressurized, Nick knew, holding Zhen's samples. But it was cold down here, or else Nick was sweating and shivering on his own.

His hands shook as he touched the keypad by the hold
doors. Now that it came to the moment, he trembled. He was afraid. Wet spots from his fingers lingered on the keypad as he programmed in a sequence that would open the doors and lock them in place, bringing the ship in contact with the vacuum of space.

But not yet. He slipped into the hold as the doors closed behind him.

Around him the bagged samples huddled among the canisters and sealed cartons of the ship's stores. The samples with the little tags dangling from them, showing Zhen's system of collection: time, place, descriptors. Like tags on the toes in a morgue. Nick didn't blame Zhen. She was trying to save her people. The whole mission had begun that way, but the lie couldn't hold up.

He finished coding in the sequence on the outside bay doors. They'd open in… what, four minutes? OK, four minutes. Because anything less wouldn't give him time to say good-bye. Even after all that had transpired between him and Anton, Nick still wanted Anton to know that good men could disagree. For in the end, Nick still loved Anton as a friend. Past rage and hate, he'd ended back at friendship. Now that he was going to kill the ship, it was calming to know it was for love.

He turned to the comm node. Punched in the flight deck. He hugged his sides with his arms. So cold. His body seemed to be turning off a few minutes too early, going to zero. Preparing for annihilation. It aided his feeling of calm.

But when he linked with Anton on the flight deck, a stab of warmth came back.

“Anton,” Nick said. His voice wobbled. He coughed to clear his throat. ‘Anton.”

“Nick? Where are you?”

“Far away.”

A muffled voice. Anton sending someone down to the brig, no doubt. Nick didn't have much time. He looked at the chronometer on the outside bay doors. 3:26, 3:25, 3:24.

“I just wanted to tell you that I know you meant to do
the right thing. I was against you. But I know you tried to do it right.” He coughed. “You were wrong, though, Anton.”

“Nick, where are you?”

“I'm dying. Leaving now.” Anton's voice was stabbing at him. His old friend. They were both so young. Had tried to do it right. Failed. But he did love the man.

“Anton. I'm sorry. You get ready to die now.”

2:05,2:04.

Nick could hear running on the mid-deck. They'd found Spence, maybe.

“Let me help you, Nick. I know you've been hurt. Let's talk. Will you talk to me?” Muffled voices came through the comm node. The flight deck was astir now. They were wondering where he was. Mustn't say.

Nick said, “Remember how we played cards until we were stupid? How we bet ourselves into debt?” Nick tried to laugh, but couldn't conjure it. “I think you owe me ‘bout a million, don't you?”

“I do owe you, Nick.”

1:16, 1:15, 1:14.

“Forget it. I forgive it all, Anton. I'm leaving. We're all leaving, and every one of these bags.”

Nick turned to look at the hold. It would all blow out the bay doors within seconds. A quick way to go, by God, not the slow slide he'd been on …

“Anton?” He waited. But there was no answer. ‘Anton?”

Nick swore. The bags. He'd given away his position. Oh, Venning, you screwed up again. Again and again.

Then, gathering his wits, he started keying the pad. There was under a minute to go, but it was too long. He had to shorten the sequence. Only it was locked. That would take a while to undo. His hands shook as he punched in a maneuver to instantly open the bay doors and the interior ship doors opposite. To open both doors, to blow out the ship.

For love of duty.

Anton was dashing for the flight deck door. “He's in the cargo hold,” he shouted at Webb. “Override him. He's going to lock open the bay doors.”

He ran. Behind him, he heard Webb shouting for backup. Anton pounded down the short passageway from the flight deck, to the forward ladder, sliding down it and hitting mid-deck with both feet.

Webb was on the ship intercom, saying, “We're trying, Captain, but he's got us locked out. You've got thirty seconds before he blows it.”

Anton raced to the hatchway in the floor, unlocking the arm and swinging the hatch door up. Sliding through, he found the bulkhead ladder and slid down to the lower deck.

The instrument pad by the side of the cargo bay doors was blinking orange. A Klaxon had come on sometime during his race to the hold, blaring in tandem with the pulsing of the light.

Anton was at the keypad, pressing Override. Override. But the light still pulsed, turning his fingers the color of fire. Override. The counter was showing twenty seconds. Nineteen. This couldn't be.

Anton activated the comm node on the door. “Nick. Release the inner door. Take the cargo with you. Let us live. Your last act of honor. Do it, Nick.”

Nick's voice came thin and reedy through the intercom. “Good-bye, Anton. See you soon, old buddy.”

Anton drew his pistol and fired point blank into the keypad. The electronics flared blue.

Then a rumble grabbed the deck, a tremor and a double-punch explosion. Nick had blown the bay doors.

But the inner doors held. From behind them came the crashing of materials blasting toward the open bay the chaos of every loose part, tool, and shred of exploded equipment whirling in a frenzy to reach the gap and jettison
into space. Among them, one Nick Venning, lately of the starship
Restoration.
Once of sound mind. Once a friend.

Anton lay his head against his arm along the bulkhead, catching his breath.

In the next moment, Ensign Petry was crashing down the ladder, armed and with a wild look in his eyes.

Anton turned to him. “Doors held,” he said, wonderingly

Petry's eyes widened as it sank in that the cargo hold was blown. He held his pistol, pointing it at the door as though hell itself was likely to throw open the doors and come charging though.

Petry looked up as Webb lumbered down the ladder. Then he holstered his weapon, murmuring to Anton, “The crew was with you, Captain. We were never going to …” He looked at the cargo hold. “It was only Spence and Lupe.”

Anton nodded, clapping him on the shoulder. “Thank you. Stick with me, will you? I'll need you.”

Petry gave a crumpled smile. “Yes, sir.” Then: “We want our feet on real ground. We'll stay, Captain.”

Webb looked at the hole in the bulkhead where the control pad had been. “Not elegant, Captain.” He grimaced at the damage. “Kind of like going through the hut wall that time?”

Anton shrugged. He was developing a style. Not a great one, but it was better than none at all. “Yes, Sergeant,” he said. “Kind of like that.”

Coda Eleven. To Leave the Galaxy.

In two billion years the dark matter structure will return. That is the next cycle of its journey. Though now it grows satiated, having nearly reached equilibrium, by then its data will have dissipated, renewing the gradient between itself and the life-bearing planets it encounters. Then the sentient species that remain here must leave the galaxy. In that epoch, if you survive, you will have surpassed us in knowledge, using all that is stored here. What the other galaxies hold, we have not assayed. You may do so. You may encounter other custodial species even more advanced than yourselves, or none, given the factors naturally contributing to the paucity of complex life. You may write the codas of the universe.

For a landing place, Anton selected a cultivated flatland near the palace. No fires burned nearby, so he judged the location a safe place for the shuttle.

At the controls, Anton put the craft down with a sure touch, his crew ready and briefed to deploy outside the craft and defend it. With just five others on board, Anton
wouldn't be bringing firepower to Vidori—though he realized it wasn't physical weapons the king wanted, but psychological ones. Anton also knew that the crew needed to stay segregated for a quarantine period, to be sure they weren't carrying disease. Of course, he could be infected, too. But his immunity had held this long, and he'd only been exposed for forty-eight hours. Besides, there wasn't much choice.

He'd told the shuttle crew what to say to any of the king's guards who approached the ship. Later, when the sick did come down in the shuttle, they'd need a pavilion to themselves. Zhen said one of the codas, a long information dump on biomolecular engineering, might offer a breakthrough for effective antimicrobial agents. Perhaps, even with their limited equipment, they could make use of this, should the virus erupt again. But that was tomorrow's issue. Today, there was a war.

Anton shut down the systems. Assembling with his people at the access hatchway, he saw the looks on the crew's faces, especially the youngest among them. It was a foreign world, a planet they'd have to call home, and that wouldn't welcome them, not entirely.

And, they would soon find out how the aversion went both ways.

Anton would have welcomed an encounter with Vidori's soldiers, but he hiked toward the Puldar unchallenged. In the early dawn, the area was quiet, with heavy smoke obscuring any sight of the river or glimpse of the king's pavilion, which must be nearby. Distant gunfire gave evidence of fighting upriver, perhaps all along the river system. He hoped that Bailey would be safe in the king's pavilion—if she stayed there, managing for once to stay out of affairs in which she had no business. The chances of that were slim, he figured.

Moving downslope toward the river from the landing
site, Anton chose to travel light, with a handgun and a rifle, a vest bulging with power clips to recharge his weapons, and one small drone. A combat knife hugged his lower right leg. Goggles lent thermal and low-light vision in the miasma of smoke, and a radio node on his collar established a link with the shuttle. He would be an easy target; no one could mistake him for a Dassa. At the same time, visibility was what he brought to this fight. To be seen at Vidori's side.

But first he had to find him.

Impenetrable brush along the Puldar separated him from the river, forcing him to beat his way west along the overgrown shore until he found a dock at a small compound. The residents had fled, leaving the place inhabited only by drifting smoke. Anton strode onto the pier, scanning the river. A few empty skiffs drifted on the current and several were pinned against the dock by the river flow. He chose the sturdiest of them and, grabbing a paddle, headed downriver.