The Well of Stars (22 page)
Authors: Robert Reed
“What are you doing now?” she asked them.
Then she apologized for leaving. “I did what was best. I hope. For the ship, which means for you, too.”
It was the last morning of her holiday.
Halfway back to the boat, while thinking about nothing clear or certain, she hesitated. Her arms pulled up beneath her and stopped, while her tucking legs remained tucked. A body just buoyant enough to float now drifted along on the last of its momentum, and then she pulled herself into a tiny hard ball, exhaling hard enough to leave her lungs deflated and small.
Washen sank.
A minute passed, and most of another. Then she surfaced again, breaking into a hard clean crawl fed by deep quick breaths. Water splashed. Legs thundered. She reached the schooner in less than ten minutes, too exhausted to climb the ladder on her first attempt, or her second.
Struggling, Washen managed to clamber up onto the dampened oak deck.
Still naked, she tucked herself into a fetal ball, eyes open and seeing nothing. Nothing. She was focused and slack-faced. Even as her breathing slowed, she didn’t seem to notice, a deeply distracted attitude clinging to her as she dried herself and dressed.
“Make breakfast or not?” she asked herself.
“Make it,” she decided.
But somewhere in the middle of the preparation, watching blocks of salted fat and round dabs of cultured eggs cooking in the hot skillet, she said, “Stop.”
Alone, she climbed up on deck and sat on the narrow bow.
To herself, she said, “Okay. I guess that’s it then.”
Several hours before her vacation was scheduled to
end, she woke one of her nexuses, and with a calm, smooth, and certain voice, she said, “Pamir.”
end, she woke one of her nexuses, and with a calm, smooth, and certain voice, she said, “Pamir.”
“It’s too early,” he snapped.
“Listen,” Washen said.
“What?”
“As soon as possible,” she said.
Angry silence.
Then she glanced out over the empty water, feeling the day’s delicious wind playing across her face. “We need to change course,” she said to Pamir and to herself. “Today, I mean. This minute. And I couldn’t be more sure.”
“Two three-engine burns,” Washen promised. “In thirteen hours, then fifty hours later. Brief burns, the second putting us on a parallel course. Here. We’ll be moving ten AU removed from our present route. Here. Outside the tunnel wall, no polyponds or major obstructions visible. Of course we’ll send warnings beforehand. We don’t want to be impolite. And yes, we’ll have to absorb extra impacts. Piercing the wall, then a fortyfold increase in the base erosion rate. But that’s within tolerances. Ten years to cross the Sack, and what’s the best guess? Between nine and eleven hundred Class-4 impacts, and half a hundred Class-3s. With nothing large enough, at least so far, to cause a Class-2 or worse.” Washen threw a sturdy look down the length of the table, telling the Submasters, “I’ll offer my reasons, starting with the most obvious and weakest example.” She paused for a moment, then admitted, “I don’t trust our hosts, and a prudent course correction that puts us on a new, unexpected trajectory … well, that’s going help me sleep tonight.”
Again, she fell silent.
The meeting room was long and plainly decorated, one of the short walls overlooking the ship’s bridge. Better than a hundred captains were visible below them, standing at their stations, accomplishing their work with a smooth competence. But sometimes one or two would glance up at the Submasters, narrowed gazes and a few muttered words hinting at the curiosity and the raw worry that was already seeping through the ranks.
Why this emergency meeting? they wondered. And why were the other Submasters staring at the First Chair with those stunned expressions? What had she said that was so awful?
A fef raised a middle arm, human fashion.
“Just a moment,” Washen cautioned. Then she leaned across the long table, adding, “The polyponds aren’t talking. But if we do the unexpected, maybe we can generate a fresh dialogue with them.”
The alien arm dropped, but an urgent voice said, “Madam.”
“Change course,” Washen argued, “and we might disrupt our hosts’ plans. Whatever they happen to be.”
“Madam—”
“How long would it take the polyponds to barricade the tunnel ahead of us?” Washen looked at the chief engineer. “Since they only need to drag matter across a few tens of thousands of kilometers—”
“Hours,” Aasleen reported. “They could push a gram of material into every thousand cubic meters, and manage it in less than twenty-four hours.” Then she allowed her own skepticism to surface, calmly adding, “If, if, if that happened to be their desire.”
Washen magnified portions of the most recent charts, feeding them into her colleagues’ nexuses. “I see five concentrations of matter,” she pointed out. “Scattered beside the tunnel, we have congregations of dust and cometary grit, and inside this last mass, there’s enough iron to fashion a good-sized asteroid. It might have been an asteroid that wandered
into the Inkwell and was mined to dust. For all we know, these features have always been here. They’re entirely benign. But if not … if the polyponds wanted to pull this moon back into a single mass and then drop it in our way—?”
into the Inkwell and was mined to dust. For all we know, these features have always been here. They’re entirely benign. But if not … if the polyponds wanted to pull this moon back into a single mass and then drop it in our way—?”
“They still can,” a deep voice interrupted.
Washen glanced at Pamir. “Elaborate,” she said.
“Your new course doesn’t get us far from these maybe-hazards,” he pointed out. “The only advantage, from what I can tell, is that we’ll be outside the tunnel, which means outside that wall of dust. Our eyes will work a little better now. If something approaches, we might see it sooner.”
“That’s one of my reasons for doing this,” Washen agreed. But she would have been more honest to say, “It’s just another tidy rationalization.”
This was an instinctive decision, and what could she offer?
Openness.
“Yes,” she said to the fef. “You have a comment.”
The creature bent in the middle, lifting his face high before remarking, “Our maneuver will be misunderstood. Unless aggression is the intention, and then we will be making our plans transparently plain.”
Washen nodded and waited.
Pamir responded for both of them. “What I know about polyponds—what I am certain about—is that too many of them to count are burning up a huge portion of their own big bodies to approach us. Feeding their curiosity, maybe. But I’ve never genuinely believed that. And I’d tell you what I do believe, except after months of hard thought, I still don’t know. So I’ll just assume that they want to take possession of our vessel, and like any muscle-bound bully, they don’t see the need to explain themselves.”
A pause.
Then Pamir glanced at Washen, in warning. “That’s not to say I completely agree with our First Chair’s plan. I can’t. But we’re at the point where we have very little freedom of motion. We’re going to plunge through the
Satin Sack, following the same essential course, and nothing substantial can possibly change. That’s why I’ve got a little proposal of my own. Something that I haven’t quite mentioned yet.”
Satin Sack, following the same essential course, and nothing substantial can possibly change. That’s why I’ve got a little proposal of my own. Something that I haven’t quite mentioned yet.”
Washen looked at him, and she looked into herself. What was her motivation here? From everything possible and everything feared, which story did she believe in more than any other?
“A third burn,” Pamir offered. “I think we need one.”
Everyone referred to Washen’s charts, trying to guess where the new burn would happen.
He said, “An all-engine burn, this time.”
On the chart, a thin white line marked the two deft jogs in their course, and then Pamir added a bluish flare, shoving the ship’s mass forward with a very slight acceleration, pushing it faster into the blackest depths of the Sack.
“It won’t buy us much velocity,” he admitted. “But anything that throws off our enemy’s timetable sounds workable to me.”
Washen considered his model.
“More discussion?” Aasleen asked. “Or is everything decided?”
Another dozen Submasters asked the same question.
Then the fef gazed at the Master Captain, saying, “Your excellence,” with a worshipful tone. “What are your feelings and configurings on this matter, your excellence?”
Sitting at one end of the long table, flanked by her First and Second Chairs, the great woman appeared to smile. But it was a stern, unhappy expression, and the voice that came rolling out of her was sorry and dark. “I have doubts about each of these maneuvers,” she admitted. “Doubts and worries, and genuine concerns. But alone, I can’t make decisions of consequence. I know this, and I can almost accept this limitation. If my first two chairs decide that there will be three burns, then there will be three burns. I have nothing but voice and experience to offer here.”
Washen felt a chill along her neck. She glanced at the Master, then sighed and turned back to Pamir, remarking, “You don’t have an end point on this huge burn of yours.”
“Don’t I?” he kidded.
“How many days do you intend? Or is it weeks?”
“What do you want from my engines?” Aasleen pressed.
“I was thinking of years,” Pamir admitted. Then with a snort, he reminded everyone, “We’re being ambushed here. So why not gallop as fast as possible for as long as possible?”
The silence was perfect and brief.
Staring at the Master Captain, Osmium asked, “What are your doubts, madam?”
“Do you wish to maintain our present course?” asked the fef. “As we promised the polyponds?”
A wide hand swept through the air.
“No,” she replied with a rumbling voice. Then a sudden laugh took everyone by surprise. “No,” she said and again, “no, I don’t have any unique opinions on the merits and risks of any course adjustment.”
She treasured this moment, every eye firmly focused on her.
“But I do know something about duplicity and shrewdness. And as reasonable as this plan feels, I can’t help but wonder … with a tight chest and a drumming heart, wonder … if this is what the polyponds always intended us to do … !”
THE FIRST BURN was preceded by a quick, thorough, and scrupulously honest explanation of reasons. There was little time to dress up the announcements, much less tailor them for individual species. The Master Captain spoke to passengers and crew at the same time, the practice of aeons allowing her to appear both confident and in control. Yes, there would be a wave of quick impacts. Yes, there would be more large impacts. No passengers would be allowed on the ship’s leading face, at least for the time
being. Repair teams and fabrication facilities would be on constant duty. Then with an unflappable resolve, she reminded billions that a large portion of the Inkwell had already been crossed, without incident, and despite the approaching polyponds, not one shot had been fired and no war was declared. “And unless we’re given spectacular reasons,” she concluded, “we will hold our new line and ask nothing of anyone but ourselves.”
being. Repair teams and fabrication facilities would be on constant duty. Then with an unflappable resolve, she reminded billions that a large portion of the Inkwell had already been crossed, without incident, and despite the approaching polyponds, not one shot had been fired and no war was declared. “And unless we’re given spectacular reasons,” she concluded, “we will hold our new line and ask nothing of anyone but ourselves.”
The tunnel wall tested the shields and laser arrays. A few thousand mirrors were off-line for several days, and one crew of fef were vaporized when a fist-sized lump of stone fell on their heads. Then the ship was slicing its way through a bank of cold hydrogen, the shields blazing overhead, and another three engines were twisted and ignited, leaving three broad columns of fierce heat and stripped nuclei curling around one another, building elaborate and sloppy knots across millions of kilometers.
The third burn began an hour later.
For the first time since humans came upon this relic, every engine was lit in the same instant and left burning, lakes of liquid hydrogen flooding into chambers of high-grade hyperfiber, compressed and ignited and the blasts made more powerful by myriad tricks and cheats. Antimatter spiked the fuel, and the hyperfiber vibrated across a multitude of dimensions and shadowy realms. Energy normally lost was brought back again. Neutrinos were focused and ejected. A brilliant kick was delivered to the ship, and twenty Earth masses responded with an ever-so-slight acceleration.
At a distance, the fourteen engines made for a single bright point of light and a straight hot trail that grew until it was light-weeks long.
But at a greater distance, the engines were only a steady, nearly feeble glow visible only in narrow portions of the infrared. And the ship was nothing. A tiny, tiny point surrounded by a multitude of smaller engines moving tinier masses … hundreds of thousands of buds now … a diffuse sphere collapsing toward a single point,
and growing in numbers by the day, by the moment … a blaze of steam and plasmas driving that multitude down on top of that sluggish and tiny and very nearly helpless machine.
and growing in numbers by the day, by the moment … a blaze of steam and plasmas driving that multitude down on top of that sluggish and tiny and very nearly helpless machine.
Handing Mere a long piece of yellow paper, he said, “Here. This is for you.”
“I can’t read this,” she complained. Nobody could read it. The paper was rough and jammed full of delicate scribbles—the hard work of a persistent and empty little child, no doubt. Looking at her dead husband, she pointed out, “This isn’t Tilan, and it isn’t human, either.”
“But it’s for you,” he claimed.
So she stared at it again, harder this time.
“Help me,” she begged.
“It is a deeply embedded pattern,” a voice told her. “A persistent thought in the fragment’s surviving memory.”
“I’m very tired,” she confessed.
Silence.
“For a moment, I thought you were someone else …”
“Madam,” the AI said. “Perhaps sleep would do you a service, madam.”
Mere looked at a diamond sphere, and inside it, the suspended fragment of the polypond mind. Warmth and an array of delicate silver fingers had allowed a feeble life to emerge. The fragment was thinking. This was what it seemed to be thinking. Again, Mere stared at the display cube nestled in her hand, exhausted eyes working their way through the intricate web of three-dimensional symbols.
“This is my friend’s mind?”
“It is a very simple representation, yes.” A hint of pride surfaced as the machine remarked, “The amount of information
is impressive. Despite time and the mind’s damage, it has retained this much.”
is impressive. Despite time and the mind’s damage, it has retained this much.”
“A three-dimensional image?”
“And more, madam.”
She hesitated. “There’s a time component?”
“Yes.”
“Show me.”
Every thread of the web slowly shifted position, and after a little while, all began to contract or to melt away. The display shriveled into a smaller, denser shape that eventually became nothing but a dark smudge.
“This is the past?”
“It seems so,” the machine offered.
Mere nodded, her tiny face pale and drawn. Then an instinct tickled her, and smiling, she said, “There’s more, isn’t there?”
“Several curiosities, yes.”
The AI ran the image forward in time. The smudge enlarged and grew thinner, becoming a lacework of tiny details rendered in three dimensions. Turning the cube in her hands, she studied its final shape. “I see a resemblance,” she muttered. “Is this a map of the Inkwell?”
“Perhaps.”
“Are these strands the rivers of ice?”
“No.”
“Okay,” she said. “The curiosities. Show me.”
A tiny portion of the display was enlarged a thousandfold, revealing an equally intricate set of features. The central strand was composed of a multitude of tiny flecks and round forms and new strands as straight as taut hairs. Again, time ran backward. The various features shifted and sometimes vanished, and the round shapes passed out of view or shrank down to tiny points that moved together, swirling in unison much the same as the polypond buds swam inside their birthing space.
“Watch carefully,” the AI advised.
Time ran forward, ending with something very close to the present.
“Did you notice?”
“I doubt it.”
Like an endlessly patient teacher, the AI said, “Watch again.”
Three times, the process was repeated. And then Mere said, “Enough,” as she touched the display with the nail of one finger. “There are always differences, is that right? The positions of these features … they seem to shift a little bit …”
“Minuscule differences, but genuine. I have unfolded this thought more than twelve thousand times, and each replay is unique.”
Mere opened her mouth, then closed it again.
“This is a partial memory,” the machine offered. “Perhaps your friend is struggling to recall everything with precision.”
“No,” Mere said. Then she set the cube aside, drifting out of the tiny lab, trying to coax her weary mind into using its own deep and perishable memories.
A navigational AI whispered, “You asked to be informed, madam.”
“More buds moving?”
An image filled the nearest touch screen. Several light-months deeper inside the Satin Sack, a multitude of watery bodies were beginning to accelerate, engines flinging much of their bodies into the dusty gloom, giving them momentum while stealing away most of their lazy mass.
“I want to see the ship now, please.”
Still far behind her, the ancient vessel was visible only in the infrared, the blaze of its engines and the wild discharging of its shields producing a sloppy dot that would brighten over the next months and years. While Mere watched, a tiny flash of light swept across the leading face. The laser array had struck some burly hazard. Another few seconds told her that the blow was successful. If anything substantial had reached the hull, she would
have seen the blast. In her present mood, she probably would have felt it, too.
have seen the blast. In her present mood, she probably would have felt it, too.
“I assume these little ones are also aiming for the Great Ship.”
“Presumably, yes,” said the navigator AI.
“And when?”
“As with the rest—” the voice began.
She named the year. This was a slow stately chase, and everything about it seemed inevitable. Irresistible.
Mere returned to the other AI. “You mentioned more than one curiosity. What else is there?”
“I have to warn you. I’m not trained in the details and every side-shoot concept that involves these high mathematics.”
“Okay.”
“But more than four dimensions are folded into the memory. They are invisible, but they seem to have a genuine value.”
She nodded, watching the polyponds rise to meet the ship.
“When I said that this is a partial memory,” the AI continued, “and perhaps your friend is struggling to recall—”
“I said, ‘No.’”
“Would you explain why, madam?”
Every AI listened now. A glance at the main touch pad told her that she was the focus of considerable interest.
Recovering the display cube, she offered, “I don’t think this is a genuine memory, and it isn’t a map, either.” Then she shook her head, adding, “This is a lesson, I’m guessing. Search our library. Learn what you can about mathematical treatments of time … treatments that erase the concept of an authentic past … and then apply what you learn there to what we have with us here …”
A moment passed.
“This is a very complicated subject,” the AI complained.
“Then you aren’t thinking about it properly,” she chided gently. Then she pushed the cube aside, ordered
the cabin lights down, and forced herself to crawl inside her sacklike bed and rise into a dreamless deep sleep.
the cabin lights down, and forced herself to crawl inside her sacklike bed and rise into a dreamless deep sleep.
BUT THERE WAS such a creature as the Past: a remote and simple and pure entity, and everything of consequence had leaped from its beautiful self. What every Tilan understood instinctively, and what Mere had learned in her long early life, was that the future was infinite and unknowable. Every instant of time had no choice but to explode into long lines of potential. Existence was a multitude of rivers born from an ever-increasing assortment of springs. Mere was born in one moment and one place, and now she lived on a million worlds and between the worlds and in places she could never imagine.
This Mere had a past that she knew well and cherished.
This Mere only appeared solitary, but she was part of a rich thread of interlinked moments leading directly from that slightly younger, slightly less informed woman who had told her AI, “Then you aren’t thinking about it properly.”
Eleven months had passed, and Mere was cold again. She had dismantled and dispersed the
Osmium,
power minimal and her own body chilled to the brink of death. Surrounding her was an ebony shell of motionless dust, smothering and dense and surprisingly warm within. When she studied the cloud earlier, in visual light and from a great distance, she saw nothing. Her best eyes had stared at the same points for hours, absorbing only the occasional glimmer of radio noise and the wandering photons that had pierced the banks of dust and molecular hydrogen. But the infrared was richer, revealing a network of starlike dots and tidy smears arranged with precision. And more telling, her surviving neutrino detector—a minimal sensor on its finest day—was loudly proclaiming, “Something bright, I see! I see!”
Osmium,
power minimal and her own body chilled to the brink of death. Surrounding her was an ebony shell of motionless dust, smothering and dense and surprisingly warm within. When she studied the cloud earlier, in visual light and from a great distance, she saw nothing. Her best eyes had stared at the same points for hours, absorbing only the occasional glimmer of radio noise and the wandering photons that had pierced the banks of dust and molecular hydrogen. But the infrared was richer, revealing a network of starlike dots and tidy smears arranged with precision. And more telling, her surviving neutrino detector—a minimal sensor on its finest day—was loudly proclaiming, “Something bright, I see! I see!”
Similar clouds were scattered throughout the neighborhood. Each was a neat sphere held together by electrostatic charges and youth. Each was smaller than a solar system and blackened with buckyballs and other carbon
grits, natural and otherwise. But only one of the clouds lay close enough to be reached. A series of little bums could push Mere into a collision course, and against the sober advice of her resident AIs, she had accepted that grand chance.
grits, natural and otherwise. But only one of the clouds lay close enough to be reached. A series of little bums could push Mere into a collision course, and against the sober advice of her resident AIs, she had accepted that grand chance.
Months later, her disassembled ship plunged into the cloud. After several hours of pushing through thickening dusts, she spotted her potential targets. They were tiny objects. Remote. Yet the gap was barely 50 million kilometers now, which was no distance at all. On her present course, Mere would pass by the first of the mysteries in less than nine minutes. The entire collection of bodies would fall behind in another half hour. They were warm objects, pieces of them fiercely hot, each wearing elaborate radiators that pumped the excess heat into cold sinks and the surrounding cloud, and they were intriguing enough that even the most cautious AIs had stopped their public worrying.
Every moment brought little impacts and endless damage.
Mere was dying in countless other existences, but not here. Here she remained healthy enough, if only for the next little moment.
And the moment after.
And for another nine excruciating, inevitable minutes.
The
Osmium
slid past its first target without incident. Full-spectrum images were taken, samples of dust and vacuum were absorbed, and a sudden burst of radio noise was recorded in full. Even at 5 million kilometers—Mere’s closest approach—the object’s mass pulled her ship’s pieces farther apart. Then she was past her target and free to glance at the results, at the data and the first instinctive declarations of her AIs. They had danced with some kind of machine or factory. The mass of the large asteroid had been compressed and elongated, caked with hyperfiber and powered by a trailing necklace of fusion reactors. The energy production was impressive, and it was nothing. Each of the next six factories were larger,
each fed by still more reactors. The cloud’s hydrogen was the fuel. The cloud’s dust was the raw material. Both were being collected by vast electrostatic baleens and drawn inward into the first of the cylindrical factories, separated by composition and charged again, then ushered along on parallel magnetic rivers.
Osmium
slid past its first target without incident. Full-spectrum images were taken, samples of dust and vacuum were absorbed, and a sudden burst of radio noise was recorded in full. Even at 5 million kilometers—Mere’s closest approach—the object’s mass pulled her ship’s pieces farther apart. Then she was past her target and free to glance at the results, at the data and the first instinctive declarations of her AIs. They had danced with some kind of machine or factory. The mass of the large asteroid had been compressed and elongated, caked with hyperfiber and powered by a trailing necklace of fusion reactors. The energy production was impressive, and it was nothing. Each of the next six factories were larger,
each fed by still more reactors. The cloud’s hydrogen was the fuel. The cloud’s dust was the raw material. Both were being collected by vast electrostatic baleens and drawn inward into the first of the cylindrical factories, separated by composition and charged again, then ushered along on parallel magnetic rivers.
Suddenly Mere’s habitat absorbed a clean sharp blow.
Worry blossomed. Not about death, since that wouldn’t allow time enough for worry. No, she was afraid that she might be discovered. Every impact, tiny or major, produced a fountain of plasma. Plasmas were bright and obvious. Mere’s sturdiest hope was that if she was seen, she would be regarded as nothing special. Debris from lost polypond ships occasionally had to drift through this space, and if someone was watching, and if he could feel any emotion that resembled suspicion, hopefully his mind was elegant enough or lazy enough to grab on to this most ordinary explanation.
The next factories were more distant and considerably more massive. Despite its enormous velocity, the
Osmium
rippled with the tides, its pieces slowly pulled even farther apart.
Osmium
rippled with the tides, its pieces slowly pulled even farther apart.
Mere let them wander.
She gazed at the data, listening to the first impressions from the AIs, and with a tiny voice asked, “What next? Each of you, make predictions.”
There was no consensus, thankfully.
And none of the self-taught experts zeroed in on the truth.
“The dust?” she asked.
They could taste atomic hydrogen and molecular hydrogen, plus buckyball carbons with ordinary elements riding at their cores, from lithium to iron. The entire cloud was as regular and pure as any product spat out by a competent factory. Judging by the cloud’s fluid dynamics, it was a recent feature, built within the last century or two, and perhaps created as a whirlpool in one of the
electromagnetic rivers that recently weaved their way through the Sack.
electromagnetic rivers that recently weaved their way through the Sack.
“Total mass of the facility?”
Equal to a substantial moon, so far.
“Energy production?”
An assortment of voices hesitated.
“What?”
The navigator AI answered, whispering into her mind, “There’s a new mass. A body. Ahead of us now.”
“Show me.”
In the blackness was a deeper blackness. In the bitter cold lay a superchilled realm rimmed by an army of elaborate machines, and until this moment, no one had suspected its existence.
The mystery lay 20 million kilometers from Mere.
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