Seveneves

by Neal Stephenson

  The boulder itself was too steep to climb, but ashy talus had spilled to either side of it, forming loose ramps. She churned up one of these and gained an altitude where she could flatten herself against the slope and peer across the battleground. It was contained within a broad, shallow sump where water finding its way down from the slopes of the coastal range was dammed up against the outer wall of the crater. It was heavily grown over, and so its boggy nature was not evident until one set foot in it. Bard, Beled, and Roskos Yur had moved aggressively forward, made a show of force, then withdrawn to let the Red force get literally bogged down. Acting in Blue’s favor were difficulties in communication between, on the one hand, tightly organized, high-tech Red troops and, on the other, aboriginal scouts who only knew about wireless communications because a long line of Cycs named Proboscidea Rubber had memorized the “Radio” entry.

  Anyway Kathree was now well forward of her compatriots, off to what they would call the right side of the bog. In order to reach its opposite flank she could try going straight across, but this would bring her directly into the envisioned path of the Red grunts as well as trapping her in the marsh. She could cut back toward the sea and run along the camp where they’d slept last night, but she already knew that most of the buckies were stationed there. Or she could proceed farther inland and run through the pine forest that rose above the uphill side of the bog. That would take her directly across Red’s line of advance, which seemed like a bad idea on the face of it. But the Reds were just an isolated hit squad, not the vanguard of a larger force. They did not have lines of communication back to their rear. Once they had put ground behind them, they had no claim to it, no power there. Given that she could move over rough ground faster than even Beled, and given that she could hear the Neoanders a mile away, she liked her chances. So she kept moving uphill, rather than down, staying well off to the flank until she had gained a bit of altitude, then turning her attention inward.

  The Red Neoanders were clearly audible. All but one of them were below her, and as she paused and waited, she heard the thudding footfalls of the straggler going by her. They were getting orders from their B, or Beta, as per racial stereotype. To her credit, the B was not hanging back and commanding from the rear; she seemed to be in the thick of things, which placed her downslope just where the going started to get marshy enough to give them second thoughts about the way they were heading. They must have noticed by now that the native scout on their left had disappeared, which might encourage them to steer toward the right. In any case, they were briefly stymied. They were all downhill of Kathree. And they were all facing the other way.

  Looking directly across the slope she saw nothing but tall pinelike trees, forming a canopy that had stifled development of undergrowth. It would be easy going. A traversing run would take her rapidly to the opposite side of the field of battle, where she ought to be able to follow the other Digger’s trail down to wherever he’d stationed himself and zap him with an ambot before he was able to do anything heroic and stupid.

  The bang of a Neoander’s flynk whip sounded from below, and she heard someone cry out and a clamor of whanging noises as ambots were projected toward targets.

  Feeling suddenly very late, she began to run through the trees, moving openly now. When gaps appeared, she looked down across the bog. The vantage from here was excellent.

  Which explained why she nearly collided with a lone man who had stationed himself in one of those clear places, perfectly situated to overlook the bog and the cove below. His only company was a robot: a siwi with a video camera for a head, capable of rising up out of its coils like a cobra from a basket and aiming its lens in any direction. The man was standing with his back to the fight, facing his siwi, which was shooting down the hill. Kathree was quite close to that siwi when she stumbled upon this, and so, when she first took it all in, she understood the setup exactly, just as a billion Red viewers would be doing in a few minutes: in the foreground, the man, framed in rugged rocks and trees that would fill habitat dwellers with that aching need to come down here and colonize the surface. In the near background, the bog where the fighting was under way. Beyond that, the cove nestled between the pincers of wave-beaten rock, the flynk barge with its column of light making the whole scene into day, Ark Darwin farther out, rocking slowly on low seas, and the sky adding some light of its own as the dawn approached.

  The man wasn’t expecting her. She got the impression, somehow, that he’d been rehearsing, going over his lines, clearing his throat, preparing for a performance. So she had a few moments in which to stare at him.

  The three incarnations of Kath Amalthova had, in their collective lifespan, only laid eyes on live Aretaics a few times, and then only from a distance. So she had no clear measure of what counted as impressive or handsome among that race. But this one had to be one of the finer specimens. He must be over two full meters in height. His long raven hair was swept back from his forehead to make the most of a high noble brow, a strong prominent nose, large, jet-black, deep-set eyes. A few creases on his face gave him an air of sober maturity.

  Five thousand years ago, aristocracy had died, along with almost everything else, and yet the idea of aristocracy—the aspirations that it, at least in an idealized form, drew out of the human psyche—lived on in everything about this man’s appearance, his attire, his posture, and the way in which he gazed upon Kathree when he had recovered from his astonishment and understood what was happening. The look on his face said that this unexpected encounter was fascinating, as well as slightly amusing, the sort of twist of fortune that happened from time to time to sophisticated persons, and that, political differences notwithstanding, the two of them might one day discuss the whole affair wryly over a glass of fine red wine from Antimer. Or at least that was the case until Kathree’s ambot struck him right in the middle of his forehead.

  Sensing movement and hearing the discharge of her katapult, the siwi—which apparently had some rudimentary ability to follow what was interesting—swiveled in her direction, but she stomped at its neck from behind. It gave way beneath the impact of her heel and made a creditable effort to remain standing, but was forced to uncoil itself so as to effect a soft landing on the ground. From there it might have pursued her into the trees, had it been programmed for pursuit. But it was really nothing more than a moderately smart camera platform, and so it stayed where it was, doggedly trying to center the face of the Aretaic in the middle of its frame. Since the Aretaic was rolling and writhing like a man on fire, this gave its algorithms a vigorous workout.

  Kathree resumed her headlong run through the trees. She bent her course back toward the sea, entering the final leg of a U-shaped career around the bog. She slowed down. If her conjecture was correct, she must be drawing close to the other Digger. And unlike Bard, Beled, and Roskos Yur, she had nothing to protect her from those steel-headed arrows.

  She heard a creaking noise from uphill—behind her. She turned around to see a redheaded, blue-eyed Digger, no more than five meters away, holding an arrow at full draw, aimed right at her. The freshly sharpened edges of its hand-forged steel warhead made bright arcs as they reflected the light from the cove. She had holstered her katapult to leave both hands free for scrambling. She had nothing.

  Cantabrigia Five hadn’t exactly commanded her to incapacitate both of the Digger scouts. Just to prevent them from doing harm, and to prevent their dead bodies from showing up on video screens around the ring.

  “You’re making a terrible mistake,” she said.

  The Digger didn’t move, but he did blink slowly. She took it as assent to keep talking. “Those people—the Reds—are only pretending to be your friends so that they can piggyback on your claim to the surface. They want to take it all for themselves.”

  “And you?” he asked.

  “Blue is no better, in some ways.”

  “Then why should we heed your counsel?”

  “You should heed no one’s counsel blindly. Neither mine—no
r his.” She made a little movement of the head toward the Aretaic.

  Silence as he considered it.

  “Do you know Ceylon Congreve?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Has Ceylon Congreve spoken to you of chess?”

  “We do not need a Cyc to tell us of chess,” the Digger said. “We play it all the time.”

  “Then you know that pawns are weak—except for when their position on the board gives them power. Early in the game they are sacrificed freely. Late in the game they may checkmate the king.”

  She was interrupted by another whipcrack from below, followed by two more in rapid succession. She fought the temptation to turn around and look. The Digger’s blue eyes strayed toward the battlefield, took something in, then returned to her. At no time did the arrowhead waver.

  Kathree continued: “You are pawns. You can’t begin to imagine how small and weak you are compared to the forces above. If you allow yourself to be played as such by Red, you will be sacrificed as soon as it suits their purposes. If you play a longer game, though, you can yet grow powerful. As powerful as the other human races.”

  With a suddenness that made Kathree flinch, the Digger raised his weapon and relaxed the arm that had been drawing the arrow back. He plucked the nock off the string and placed the arrow back in his quiver.

  “I take your words with a grain of salt,” he said.

  “Good.”

  “But some of what you say confirms suspicions that I have harbored in my breast since the coming of the Red people, and so I have made up my mind to go back and speak to the others of these matters.” And then he simply turned his back on Kathree and began hiking back up into the mountains of Beringia.

  “I KNOW YOUR STORY, TYURATAM LAKE,” SAID CANTABRIGIA FIVE, “OR at least the portions of it that have made their way into official records.”

  “Half of it, then.”

  “Be that as it may, I sense how distracting this must be for you.” She made the tiniest suggestion of a glance up the slope. Even though her eyes were screened by the lenses of a stylish varp, their golden hue magnified the gesture. “Part of you wishes to join the battle. That’s commendable, but I need you—the Purpose needs you—here.”

  “Fine. You have my attention,” Ty said. Inappropriately, irrelevantly, he was wondering how old this woman was. Epigenetic shifts could roll back many of the visible effects of aging. At least one Moiran, Jamaica Hammerhead Twelve, had lived to the age of two hundred. Ty’s estimate of Cantabrigia Five’s age increased by a decade every time he interacted with her. Currently he was thinking that she might be eighty years old.

  “What do you know of the Pingers?” she asked.

  “In all honesty, they sound more myth than fact.”

  “Myth carries more weight anyway, in times like these.”

  “What do you know of them?” Ty demanded.

  For once, Cantabrigia Five seemed a little off balance. She looked at him sharply, lifted her varp, rested it on the top of her head.

  “I need to know,” Ty said, “whether they came out of some Red gene lab.”

  “Red doesn’t even know they exist,” said Cantabrigia Five.

  “Did we make them?”

  “Blue? No, your hypothesis was correct, Ty.”

  “And how would you know what my hypothesis was?”

  Her eyes strayed to the pizza box, which was leaning against a boulder that protruded from the beach. “I know what is in there.”

  “Thank you,” Ty said. He turned away from her and began striding in the direction of a tall young Ivyn, standing on the beach and gazing up nervously toward the sounds of battle. “Einstein! Eyes on me. Time for you to make history.”

  CRACKING A WHIP MADE OF SMALL ROBOTS JOINED END TO END into a long, flexible chain was neither an especially bad nor an especially good way of engaging a foe in ambot-based combat. Extensive studies conducted within Blue military research labs had concluded that, on average, it was somewhat less effective than the more obvious procedure of just shooting individual ambots out of katapults. A dissenting opinion held that such studies were flawed because they failed to take into account two factors that were important in actual battle: One, the psychological impact on a defender who knew that the attack might literally whip around and come at him from any direction, including around corners or over barricades. Two, the element of skill, which was difficult to measure scientifically; the test subjects wielding those things in the lab were unlikely to have the same knack for it as Neoanders who had grown up using them and who had access to an ancient body of lore—a martial art, in effect—that they were disinclined to share with anyone else. If the whip was allowed to dissociate in midcrack, then its component ambots would be flung toward the target at supersonic velocity, which was as good as could be achieved by shooting the same objects out of a katapult. If it made contact with the target, direct physical damage would be inflicted and the ambots that had inflicted it could decouple themselves and carry out their usual programs. And if the whipcrack was off target, the chain could be recovered in full with no waste of ammunition. All the ambots came back for another attempt: something that certainly could not be said of ones that had been fired out of kats.

  On Kathree’s list, if they ever got out of this, was to sit down over a glass of pinot noir with Langobard and ask him where he had picked up his skills in this department, since, until recently, he had been sustaining a fairly credible cover story about being a peaceful wine merchant in Cradle. She already suspected that he would deflect any such questions by saying that the Antimer Neoanders, like many cultures throughout human history, had a tradition of teaching martial arts to their young ones.

  A skeptic might remark that fighting with whips made of little robots might be all well and good in the clean and well-ordered confines of a space habitat or a hollowed-out asteroid, or when dueling in space suits in a vacuum, or in relatively uncluttered places, such as deserts and icecaps on the surface. But in a bog full of dense, head-high vegetation it was simply a mistake. Kathree’s ears were taking in vast amounts of data that her brain didn’t know what to do with. Someone who had grown up practicing these arts, as Langobard apparently had, might have been able to hear nuances in these repetitive bangs. A crack that landed on its target would sound different from one that dissociated into a burst of flying ambots, which in turn would sound different from one that had whipped back toward the attacker or gotten fouled up in vegetation. Instead of which, all she could tell was that they were fighting down there. By the time she had completed her circuit of the bog and returned to their original line of defense above the cove, they had been fighting for rather a long time, which she interpreted as good news. She was trying to think like Cantabrigia Five, who probably wouldn’t worry so much about trivial matters like casualties and the control of the battlefield. More important was the narrative of the battle. And so far what it looked like was that a small Blue group, conducting Treaty-approved survey operations on their side of the Treaty-defined boundary, had been pursued by bloodthirsty Red Neoanders until trapped against the ocean, where they were now putting up a heroic and surprisingly prolonged last-ditch stand to protect a few noncombatants. Ka-three didn’t wish to be this cynical, for Cantabrigia Five really was a fantastically appealing and charismatic person, but she suspected, at some level, that a Blue fatality or two, up in the bog, and perhaps an on-camera interview with a maimed and bereaved survivor, might be the perfect counter for the propaganda coup that the Aretaics had scored a few days ago.

  Thoughts such as those were luxuries she did not afford herself until she had reached a position above the cove, well behind the battle zone. And—no coincidence—also behind the line of camera-carrying buckies recording the heroic rearguard action.

  She looked down at the lower camp. A sunrise, in weather like this, was too much to ask for, but the sky was getting brighter all the time, and was now illuminating the beach more effectively than the towering Aitken lo
op on the barge. Perhaps in response to the sounds of battle, half a dozen or so inflatable boats had emerged from the flooded hull of Ark Darwin and begun making their way in, each carrying a few people who appeared to be wearing helmets. Good. But, annoyingly to Kathree, they were maintaining some distance. Sonar Taxlaw was standing on the boulder waving them off. She’d been joined by Einstein, who was doing likewise. That was about to become an intolerably crowded boulder, because Tyuratam Lake was wading out to join them with that pizza box under one arm. He had managed to equip himself with a dry suit, which probably made the experience a good deal more comfortable for him.

  Cantabrigia Five and Arjun were on the shore, facing out to sea, as if there were not a pitched battle going on a few hundred meters above them.

  Two of the buckies dislodged themselves from their positions above Kathree and began rolling down the slope like wire-frame boulders. At first this seemed uncontrolled, like an avalanche, but then they began to stretch and deform in a way that accommodated the rocky ground rushing beneath them, and slowed to a mincing style of descent. One of them perched on a spot where it could get a clear view of the entire cove and the other picked its way down to the sand, angling for close-ups, apparently. Cantabrigia Five turned toward it and advanced a few steps. Facing squarely into its camera, she began speaking words that Kathree had no hope of hearing at this distance.

  Kathree saw all of this while leaning back against the steep pitch of the inner crater wall. Just above her was a line of vegetation that had taken root along its brow, where the ground was level and the sunlight was as plentiful as it would ever get in these parts. It spread for some tens of meters to her left and to her right, walling off the cove from the bog and the high country above.