Ultima (45 page)

The ColU said, “Given that one simple fact—that the multiverse must be finite—and knowing how old the universe is, or was in the age we came from—it has always been possible to make an estimate of how long the universe was going to last. How long it was likely to be before we hit the multiverse wall. Probabilistic only, but . . .”

Titus snapped, “How long, then?”

The ColU said, “My latest estimate, based on my inspection of the sky as far back as our time on the
Malleus Jesu
, is three and a half billion years after the age of mankind.”

Titus shook his head, growling under his breath. “An absurd number.”

“Not to an astrophysicist,” Stef said with a smile. “That is, a philosopher who knows the stars, Titus. In my Culture we were pretty sure that the universe was a bit less than fourteen billion years old. So why should the universe last
longer
than a few billion more? You see? Not trillions or hundreds of trillions of years, or beyond the age of proton decay . . . In my Culture we used to call this the Doomsday Argument. Why should the future be so dissimilar to the past? Shouldn't we expect to find ourselves somewhere in the middle of its life span, not in its first few instants?”

Mardina was touching her belly again, as if trying to shield her baby from all this. “Three point five billion years. You're saying the universe will die, three point five billion years after the year I was born. If I understand these numbers at all—that's still an immense stretch of time.”

“Of course,” Stef said. “But here's the catch, Mardina. We have been brought to the
end
of that stretch. That's what we've determined—what the ColU has established definitively from his study of the sky.”

“It isn't just the aging of the stars, the position of the galaxies,” the ColU said. “That would be enough for a rough estimate. There are also distortions in the background glow of the sky, the fading relic of the Big Bang explosion. Distortions caused by events from the future.”

Titus tapped the pot with a fingernail. “Because of the proximity of this wall of yours.”

“Which is a tremendously energetic horizon that sends back signals, back through time. Signals that show up as distortions in the background radiation. That is why I am able to be so precise.
This
, the age in which we find ourselves, is the End Time—”

“I don't want to hear it.” Mardina stood, suddenly, pulling away from Beth, the weight of her blankets almost making her stumble into the fire. “I don't want to hear any more.” She clamped her hands over her ears, and stomped out.

Beth half rose. “She needs her boots, her cloak, if she's going out there—”

“No.” Chu was already on his feet, and grabbing his own boots. “Let me. It is our problem.”

Beth nodded to the rest. “Let him go. It will be harder for them, to be so young, to have to face this. We must let them find their way.”

Beth longed to go after her daughter, but she made herself sit still. “You're a wise man, Titus Valerius.”

He smiled, looking tired. “No. Just an old one, and a survivor. So, Collius. Here we are in the far future, as I understand it. How long until we encounter this—edge?”

The ColU said simply, “A year. No more.”

Titus nodded. “And what then? What will happen?”

Stef said, “A wall of light.”

Titus heaved a huge sigh. “Very well. From the ethereal to the practical. Shall we consider our route for tomorrow? And then we all need sleep, if Morpheus grants it tonight.”

The antistellar was the place where all the gravity-train tunnel mouths converged.

At the final destination, as the rest of the party went through the by-now practiced routine of grappling their sled-cart out of the frictionless tube, Stef walked forward, away from the tunnel. The ice under her booted feet was concrete-hard but ridged, crumpled, wind-scoured—evidently old—and was not slick, maybe it was too cold for that; the footing was good. Once, back in her original timeline, she'd skimmed in space over the polar caps of Mars, which were very old accretions of water ice, the deepest layers perhaps a couple of million years old. The ice under her feet now might be a thousand times older than that. She really had been brought to an antique time, an old universe.

And the dark-side cold itself—she seemed to remember that too, from her first experience here. This point furthest from the warmth of the star was the center of a hemisphere of endless night, of ice and dark. Yet there was a limit to the cold, even here; some warmth at least washed around the world from the day side. It was evidently a survivable cold. Still, her breath steamed, and the frigid air plucked at her lungs and nose and eyes.

As she walked she could clearly see, by the light of an Andromeda reduced to a bloated sunset sitting on the horizon, more tunnels, dark gashes in the ground: a network of tunnels lacing this chill hemisphere of the planet, and all converging here, at the antistellar, at this point of geographic symmetry.

And at the precise antistellar point itself, the place all the tunnels seemed to be pointing to—
something was there
, a kind of flattened dome from which came a glow of pale light, with structures dimly visible within.

Earthshine: it had to be him.

•   •   •

Stef walked back to her companions. By now they had the cart set up on its runners, ready for the final haul over the ice to the dome. The ColU was in its pack on Chu's back. Mardina, more visibly pregnant every day despite her layers of cold-weather clothing, stood at Chu's side, their gloved hands locked together, breath wreathed around their faces.

Titus grunted, pointing to the dome. “So our long journey is over—and
there
is the obvious destination. We should be ready to defend ourselves.”

The ColU said now, “You may be right, legionary. But consider this. Earthshine needs no such shelter as that dome, whereas you do need shelter. Perhaps the dome itself should be seen as a gesture of welcome.”

Titus nodded cautiously. “I see your reasoning. But consider this, in turn. If we would be welcome, so would Ari and Inguill have been, if they got this far. We should be prepared for whatever
they
are up to in there. Also, if Earthshine, or his image, could walk around on this ice butt-naked—”

Beth laughed. “Titus, he could fly through the air if he wanted to.”

“Then why isn't he here now? I'm quite sure he's as aware of us as we are of him. Why not come out and see us?” Titus glanced around at the group. “It's clear that there's much about this situation that we don't yet understand. We go to the dome. It's the obvious destination. The only destination. But we go in with our hands open in gestures of peace and friendship, and our weapons sheathed at our backs. Agreed?”

Stef shook her head. “You're a terrible cynic, Titus Valerius. And I'd like to see you in a knife fight; you're like an overweight panda in that cold weather gear . . . But you and your instincts have kept us all alive this long. Agreed.”

They formed into a loose party, with Titus, Chu, Clodia and Beth hauling the cart toward the dome, and Mardina walking with Stef at the rear. Titus and Chu were in the front rank, and Stef could see their
pugio
daggers tucked in the back of their belts, glittering in Andromeda light.

Mardina linked her arm through Stef's, and they walked cautiously together. Stef peered up. “That sky isn't what it was when I came this way before, with your grandfather Yuri, in that other timeline. It's been so long, the stars have swum around the sky, or aged and changed, the constellations have all melted away. I thought I would still be able to see
her
, though, up at the zenith. Brilliant she was, and as we walked to the antistellar we saw her steadily rise in the sky unlike any star.”

“‘Her'? Who are you talking about, Stef?”

“A creature called Angelia. A creation of my father.”

“Another artificial person, then. Like the ColU, like Earthshine.”

“Yes. Actually she was also a kind of ship. She and her lost sisters . . . I got to know her. I don't suppose she could have survived this long. Why, in a billion years or two her very substance would have sublimed away, probably.”

Mardina squeezed her arm. “We're in another history. She was probably never
here
at all.”

“Maybe not,” Stef said with a bitterness that surprised her. “Just another story, erased by the Dreamers' meddling.”

“No, not erased. Not as long as you remember her.”

Stef felt unreasonably touched. She patted Mardina's hand. “You're a good person, Mardina.”

Mardina laughed. “Despite my great-grandfather being a criminal mastermind downloaded into a box of metal and glass?”

“Yes. That's quite a legacy, isn't it? But Yuri at least was a good man too, your grandfather—I can tell you that much. And you're going to make a fine young mother.”

But that was the wrong thing to say. Stef could feel Mardina stiffen.

“Well, there's not going to be the time to find out, is there? Not if the ColU is right that all
this
,” and she gestured at the starry sky, “is about to roll up like a closing scroll.”

Stef could think of nothing to say.

She was relieved when Titus, in the van of the party, reached the translucent wall of the dome.

The dome was perhaps fifty meters across, Stef estimated as they walked around it, maybe ten meters tall at its midpoint, the highest point. Its skin was reasonably clear, translucent, and she saw no signs of support, no framework, no ribbing.

Titus glared in through the wall, as if he were scouting out the war camp of a bunch of unruly barbarians. Well, perhaps that wasn't so far from the truth. He pointed out structures within the dome, piles of matériel. “
That
looks like what might have brought Ari and Inguill here.” A sled, much smaller and cruder than theirs, with heaps of garments and blankets roughly dumped around it—heavy coats, thick boots.

“And that object in the center, a kind of pillar in the middle of a mesh framework—”

“I believe that is Earthshine,” the ColU murmured. “His support unit anyhow. But evidently heavily modified, for some purpose. And, over there . . .”

They could all see what it meant. At one side of the dome was a Hatch emplacement, set into the rocky floor.

Stef cupped her hands around her eyes and peered in through the wall, trying to see better, cursing the vapor that rose up from her breath. A Hatch like any other Hatch. Just like the one she'd been brought to on Mercury, the first she'd seen—like the one Dexter Cole had found here on Per Ardua, right here at the antistellar— just like the Hatches she'd seen on worlds of other stars. All of them were alike, just a rectangular panel a few meters across set in the ground, the fine circular seam that marked the position of the lid. Crude functional simplicity.

Yet these simple gadgets were responsible for altering history itself, for adjusting the destinies of billions of souls. Stef was a physicist, and she'd been studying Hatches most of her adult life. Still, they made her shudder.

And on this particular Hatch that lid gaped open.

“So,” the legionary snapped. “Now what? Do we cut our way in?”

Clodia pointed. “Either that, Father, or follow the arrow on the wall.”

•   •   •

They came to a doorway, a blister that protruded from the smooth dome wall.

Titus said, “This door has a handle; that's simple enough.” He squinted through the wall. “And a second door within.”

“I think it's a kind of airlock,” Stef said, surveying the dome again. “This structure has no internal skeleton. Has to be air pressure holding it up. Se we need to go through these double doors to avoid letting out all the inner air, and the warmth.”

Titus said sourly, “I have served on starships, you know; I do know what an airlock is. Not that I was expecting to find one here. The practicalities concern me more. Such as, I doubt if this lock could take more than three of us at a time. Two, if laden with baggage. We'll have to be separated to enter.”

“I sincerely doubt there will be any threat,” Stef said briskly. “Legionary, you can
see
through the wall. There is only Earthshine . . . Even Ari and Inguill are nowhere in sight. I think we can take the risk, don't you?”

“And I for one,” said Beth, “am keen to get out of this cold, for the first time in
weeks
.”

“Lead us, Titus Valerius,” Stef said.

It proved simple enough for Titus and Clodia to cycle through the airlock. Experimenting, Titus found there was a simple fail-safe. “The inner door won't open unless the outer one is firmly shut,” he boomed, his voice muffled by the thick dome wall. “The air within is warm and moist.” Still inside the airlock, he pressed his hand against the material of the dome. “This is pliant, yielding a little, but evidently thick and strong. It will be interesting to see how it withstands the blade of my
pugio
—”

“Not now, Father,” Clodia said. “Come
on
.” She led the way through the airlock's inner door and into the interior of the dome, pulling open her heavy clothing as she walked.

Stef took Mardina's hand, and they both stepped into the airlock together, leaving Chu and Beth unloading stuff from the sled. Mardina closed the outer door, and Titus opened the inner for them—and, just as Titus had described, warm, moist air gushed over them. Stef took deep, shuddering breaths, already feeling warmer than she'd been since crossing the terminator.

She walked out of the lock and stood by Titus. Mardina followed, more uncertainly. The dome itself was a silvery, translucent roof that excluded the sky, lit by small hanging lamps. Even Andromeda was reduced to a washed-out crimson glow. The ground was bare rock, blackish like some kind of basalt, scraped and grooved—presumably by the action of ice across millions of years. Stef looked over at the central clutter of gear. There was Earthshine's support unit, clearly identifiable, embedded in a nest of other equipment. There was no sign of Earthshine's avatar projection.

Titus said, “The air smells—funny. Like a ship. Or a factory.”

Stef's senses were dulled by age, but she agreed. “I smell ozone. No scent of people, or not much—”

Mardina wrinkled her nose. “Maybe my nose is sharper.
I
can smell a hint of sewage. Yuck. Not unlike what
we
smell like in the mornings, after a night under the canopy. They are here, then. My father and Inguill.”

Titus snapped, “Well, we can't hover by the door all day. Clodia! With me. We will organize the work of moving our equipment in. Beth and Chu have made a start.”

“Bring in the ColU first,” Stef suggested. “It will help us make sense of all this . . .”

Soon the ColU was set on a heap of grubby blankets just inside the lock, and Mardina had hung its sensor unit around her own neck.

Then, as the pile of their belongings gradually accumulated inside the lock, a puddle forming at its base as residual ice melted in the warmth, Stef and Mardina approached the Earthshine unit.

The processor pillar stood at the center of what looked like a sculpture of a spider, itself a few meters tall, with angled rods hinging from the central unit and plunging into the rocky ground. The rods seemed to Stef to be made of some kind of ceramic, milky and smooth. The pillar itself had long lost the wheels Beth had described, on which it had rolled around the planet. Stef could see that the casing of the support unit had been broken open, much of its innards removed or redeployed.

Because of the framework of rods, they could get no closer than a few meters from the central unit. Beyond the support unit Stef made out what looked like a manufacturing area of some kind, with various devices littering the ground—devices of an uncertain function, but an oddly smoothed-out appearance. The materials used seemed to be similar to the ceramic-like substance of the spider legs.

And beyond that, set in the ground, that open Hatch.

Stef faced the support unit. “Earthshine. Are you in there?”

“You took your time.”

•   •   •

The voice sounded as authentic as ever, but there was still no sign of a virtual human body, any of his “suits” as he'd once called them, Stef recalled.

Mardina said, “Hello, Great-grandfather. We did come as fast as we could. Given that you abandoned us in the first place . . .”

“Mardina, I can see
you
, even if I'm not much to look at. Come closer, child . . . My word. You're pregnant!”

Mardina blushed.

“The dynasty continues,” Stef said drily.

“If only for now. Who is the father?”

“Chu Yuen,” said the ColU, speaking from the slate at Mardina's neck—and, perhaps, directly to Earthshine by other means, Stef thought. “You recall, the slave from the Rome-Xin Culture who is my bearer. An intelligent boy, evidently of good stock, even if he did fall on hard times.”

“A good father, then. I look forward to getting to know him better. And I already know you too well, ColU.”

“I told you on Mars—on that other Mars—that I would hunt you down, wherever you fled.”

“And so you have. Well done. Perhaps you will do me the courtesy of listening to what I have discovered here . . .”

Stef was starting to feel dizzy. “I'm too hot, damn it, after months of being too cold.” She began to pull ineffectually at her outer coat.

At a call from Mardina, Beth and Chu hurried over with blankets from the cart, and heaped them up on the rocky ground. Beth helped Stef remove a few layers of clothing, and Chu handed her a canteen of water, brought in from outside—icy, but refreshing—and they sat her down on the blankets. Beth and Mardina sat with her, and soon Stef felt a lot more human. She refused food, however. “If I never eat another mouthful of freeze-dried potato, I won't be sorry.”

Earthshine said, “I of course need no food of that sort. But since the arrival of the others, one of my fabricators has been devoted to manufacturing human-suitable food from the raw materials of the environment—broken-up rock, organics filtered from the ice.”

The others.
It was the first time he had mentioned Ari and Inguill, even tangentially.

“A fabricator.” Mardina frowned. “What's that?”

“Advanced technology from our own timeline,” the ColU said. “A device that can take apart matter at the molecular level, or even below, and assemble it into—well, whatever you desire. It's slow but effective. My own physical frame once contained such machines. Once Earthshine and his two brothers, artificial intellects as powerful as him, lurked in holes in the ground, on Earth. And they were surrounded by fabricators and other gadgets, like miniature factories, that used the raw materials of the planet to supply them with all they needed—materials for maintenance, energy.”

Earthshine said, “I carried such gadgets with me in this support module. Now, here, I have broken them out and have put them to work. Everything you see here, the dome, this framework around me, has been manufactured from local materials, the rocks, the ice. Over on the far side of the dome I have created a pond, a body of standing water, to refresh the air. As for energy, though I have an internal store of my own, I have plumbed the planet itself for its inner heat. Manufactured drills to penetrate the surface rock layers . . .”

Stef asked, “Why did you build all this?”

“I came here because of the Hatch, Stef. To study it, and its makers. That's why we were brought to this planet in the first place, to this epoch—what other reason could there be? That's what I've been doing since I got here, primarily. But I always expected you, some of you at least, to follow. So I prepared this habitat.”

“Generous of you—”

“Although I did not expect those others to be the first of the group to come here.”

Mardina pushed herself to her feet. “‘Those others.' You mean my father and the Inca woman, don't you? You keep hinting they're here, but I don't see them. Well, there's only one place they can be.” She set off toward the open Hatch.

Beth called, “Be careful, Mardina.”

But Mardina didn't slow her pace.

Stef said now, “This frame you've put up around yourself, Earthshine. You've rooted yourself into the ground. Is this part of your thermal energy mine?”

“Oh, no,” he said now. “You'll see
that
outside—a few panels flush to the ground, deep bores beneath. All
this
is to achieve a more intimate kind of contact.”

Beth asked, “Contact with who?”

“The Dreamers,” the ColU said suddenly. “You're trying to talk to the Dreamers, aren't you?”

“This ancient world is infested with them,” Earthshine said. “Well, I imagine it always was. ColU, it is as if I have dropped an antenna into a brain. And I think—”

“Yes?” The ColU sounded breathless, eager.

“I think I hear their thoughts . . .”

And Stef Kalinski heard a gunshot.