The Saints of Salvation

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “But nobody’s looked,” Horatio said. “Not really. And you’re the greatest expert on it, Yirella.”

  “It was a hobby for a while, that’s all. I accessed what files there are, which are mostly stories. There are no solid facts—not one. Our knowledge of Sanctuary ends when the Katos ship left to build it; the humans who went with them were very thorough deleting information from the records. From then on, all we have are secondhand recollections that became our legends. I can give you a list of everything I found, and you can access them, too.”

  “We can do a lot more than that.”

  She gave him a quizzical look. “Really?”

  “Yes. We can ask people who were at the Factory.”

  “Ainsley was there, but he didn’t know anything, or he had his memories edited for security. And the only other person we know for sure was at the Factory was Captain Kenelm, and sie’s dead.”

  “You’re wrong,” Horatio said. “There is someone else.”

  “Who?” she asked sharply.

  “The Lolo Maude.”

  Yirella stared at him thoughtfully. “We don’t know where the Lolo Maude went. Sie never showed up at the neutron star.”

  “Has anyone searched for hir?”

  “No,” she agreed reluctantly.

  “Then that would be a good place to start, would it not?”

  “I…Well, yes, I suppose so.”

  “It was thousands of years ago,” Dellian said. “And those Factory warships could travel fast. That gives you a very large volume of space. Nice idea, but not practical.”

  “Sie would have flown to the enclave,” Horatio said. “And by now, sie will know the Olyix were defeated. The Alliance is broadcasting a lot of messages out into space to contact lost humans.”

  “Conjecture,” Yirella said, wishing she could sound more confident. But he’s right, it makes sense.

  “And that’s why I came to you,” Horatio said. “The corpus humans will build you a fleet of ships to search for Lolo Maude if you ask. You’re the genesis human. You created them, then you saved them in the enclave. Am I right?”

  “Well,” she said slowly, “that’s a condensed version of events.”

  “Hundred percent correct,” Dellian said proudly.

  “I’m asking you to consider my request. You don’t have to join me, but if you could just get me a single ship, I’d be eternally grateful.”

  “If Gwendoline is alive and living in Sanctuary,” Dellian said, “she will have been there for millennia. Have you thought about that?”

  “I have,” Horatio said. “At the end, I gave up everything I’d done on Earth, abandoned people who depended on me, just so I could be with her on the Pasobla. Then the Olyix caught me before I could get through a portal. She knows how much I love her. And she knows I was cocooned, that I’m not dead. I just want to see her again. I want to know she’s okay, that she led a good life after—”

  Yirella had to look at the floor so she didn’t have to see the tears in Horatio’s eyes. “Let me think about it,” she said.

  * * *

  —

  “You’ll think about it?” Dellian said once Horatio had left.

  “Well, what else could I say? The poor man clearly loves her.”

  “And I remember their story, how Saint Yuri got Horatio back after he was snatched by Olyix agents. She loved him, too.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  “Over twenty thousand years ago!”

  Yirella slumped back into the couch and put her head in her hands. “If it were you, I’d find you.”

  He sat beside her with a sigh and slipped his arm around her shoulders. “Me too.”

  She couldn’t look at him. Guilt still haunted her mind, that she didn’t quite trust him enough to confide that her original aspect had left to go hunting the God at the End of Time. And trust was such a huge part of unconditional love. Then there was the knowledge she could never get over, that this her was the clone. Not the person Del had grown up with and fallen in love with. That she was an imposter—however well-intentioned.

  Would he be flattered or horrified? Would he laugh it off, or walk out of the door? She never wanted to know.

  All that shame hung between them, the specter he couldn’t see—couldn’t be allowed to see—holding back what would make him truly happy: a family, children, everything they’d dreamed would belong to them once the war was won. She just couldn’t do it. Not until she knew for sure that they were truly safe. Because I know the war isn’t over, let alone won. Saints, do I know.

  The Alliance had established wormholes and portals across nearly a third of the galaxy. Not every star, of course; that would require a colossal—and unnecessary—network. But thanks to the corpus ships racing ever onward, their coverage was comprehensive. Alpha Defense was receiving many reports of clashes with the remnants of the Olyix, but so far, the Alliance was undefeated.

  But the galaxy isn’t safe. That it could ever be so was a foolish belief, rooted in their childhood, where fear of the other lurking outside the Immerle estate fence had been indoctrinated right from birth. And knowing it is a false belief should allow me to reject it. I am rational above all else. Yet she was scared to have a child. What might happen to it if the Olyix returned? So very, very stupid.

  She kissed him and ran her hand over his neat constable’s uniform. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

  “Huh? Well…I’ve got another batch of meetings with the I and M policy board tomorrow.”

  “So what’s up with Implementation and Monitoring?”

  “Nothing much. How do we best encourage compliance with laws when people are struggling with re-body trauma and disassociation?”

  “Carefully, I’d guess.”

  “Yeah. But some constables are being attacked, because they’re the authority figures. So there’s an argument for light armor when you’re on street patrol. They want my opinion on increased unarmed combat training, and maybe some non-lethal peripherals.”

  “That sounds paramilitary.”

  “Yeah, but ordinary people who have recovered are entitled to a degree of safety from their neighbors. The alternative is segregation based on mental status. That’s too stigmative.”

  “Sounds like what we need is more therapists.”

  “Yes, but that’s not Implementation and Monitoring. It’s not too bad with populations from the exodus worlds. But—wow—people from Earth? Their norms are very different.”

  “So are you looking forward to it?”

  “Am I…You’re kidding, right?”

  “You’re bored senseless, aren’t you?” She watched his face struggle to expel the guilty expression.

  “Maybe,” he conceded. “This is not what I trained for. It takes some adjustment, that’s all. I’m no different from anyone else. I mean, are you enjoying the assessment committee?”

  “Never have, never will.”

  “Ah. So?”

  She held both his hands and smiled contentedly, her nose a centimeter from his. “You want to get out of here?”

  “Saints, yes!”

  “I’ll call Immanueel. They can start designing a search ship for us.”

  “Oh, Saints, thank you!” He kissed her. “Hey, maybe we can find your tachyon signal while we’re looking for Lolo Maude.”

  Yirella twisted her lips in an awkward grimace. “Maybe…”

  YIRELLA1

  DEEP SPACE

  The domain was spherical, which Yirella had found somewhat disconcerting at first. A globe five kilometers in diameter, an almost unbroken green from the luxuriant jungle landscape. At its heart far above, eight tiny bright stars whizzed around one another in circular orbits, moving so fast they appeared as solid lines—electrons in a classic atom model.

  She had no idea why corpus
humans always favored a tropical climate. Something to do with having a neutron star as your home sun, maybe? But the warm and humid domain was peaceful, and gave her time to come to terms with everything that had happened. Endless time, if she needed it. Time when reflection eventually passed into resolution. She used her morning walks through the gently steaming vegetation to banish doubts. Afternoons were mostly spent reviewing memories the armada had extracted from the oneminds. Then there was yoga, which was calming—especially now. And she learned how to prepare food that had actually grown—on plants. Not that she’d abandoned printed meals, but there were days when she found cooking therapeutic.

  Then there was the news. Immanueel’s ship scanned space through a wide array of sensors, with a baseline over a thousand AUs across. There was violence out there; they’d seen it. Huge battles had been fought, powerful enough for their radiation aftermath to shine brightly across a thousand light-years—corpus fleets falling upon Olyix outposts. Every time they detected the embers of those mêlées, she was reminded of the squad—of Tilliana and Ellici, of Alexandre. Of him. Of the loss.

  This is all for you, she told the memories. So you can be safe.

  The course they’d flown since leaving the enclave had not been straight. They’d stopped every few centuries to mine and refine new material reserves from the planets in lifeless star systems; constructors formed new warships for Immanueel’s ever-expanding number of aspects. So eventually it was a modest flotilla of copper-skinned vessels that flew with her on her quest. The trajectory and pauses meant she’d eventually seen the supernova they’d caused—a gleam that outshone the incredible swirl of the core stars. She’d spent hours in an observation dome, staring at it with her naked eye, feeling no regret at the cosmic cataclysm. It was a beacon to all newly emerging species that they had nothing to fear from the stars. Almost.

  That was weeks ago, domain time.

  Immanueel’s biophysical body arrived at her home as she was finishing a lunch of avocado salad and (printed) salmon. She smiled up at them. “What have you come to tell me today?”

  “Genesis human, we have found it,” Immanueel said. There was a level of pride in their voice she’d not heard before. A hand went instinctively to her belly. That which she had done was unforgivable. But she had given up her life and love for this quest. She was entitled to some part of the joy that could have been. “Show me!”

  It was the same observation dome where she’d watched the destruction of the Olyix homestars. Now, though, the cluster of Immanueel’s ships was stationary in interstellar space, with the galactic core gleaming off to one side. Ahead was an unnatural indigo glow as if a miniature monochrome nebula were suspended out there in the darkness. Except there was no dust, no wisps of gas animated by radiation.

  “The tachyon beam,” she whispered. Tears threatened to emerge, but then she was so emotional right now.

  “As it passes through this moment in space-time, yes,” Immanueel confirmed.

  “Can you determine its direction?”

  “We have. It is not quite what we expected.”

  “Oh?” She turned to them, frowning. “Then where does it come from?”

  “The origin point is in orbit around this galaxy, inclined eighty degrees to the ecliptic.”

  “Close,” she said.

  “Yes. And, genesis human, the message was sent from sixty thousand years in the future.”

  “That’s not the end of time. Not even close.”

  “No.”

  “Okay then.” She grinned in malicious anticipation at the enigmatic glimmer of Cherenkov radiation. “Let’s go kill us a god.”

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  2206

  YURI ALSTER Connexion security chief

  CALLUM HEPBURN Utopials senior trouble-shooter

  ALIK MONDAY FBI senior special detective

  KANDARA MARTINEZ dark-ops mercenary

  JESSIKA MYE Neána metahuman

  SOĆKO Neána metahuman

  LOI Yuri’s aide

  ELDLUND Callum’s aide

  AINSLEY BALDUNIO ZANGARI founder of Connexion and its CEO

  AINSLEY ZANGARI III CEO, Connexion TranSol division

  EMILJA JURICH Utopials leader

  GWENDOLINE SEYMORE-QING-ZANGARI Connexion finance director

  HORATIO SEYMORE social services agency advisor

  KOHEI YAMADA Connexion security, London chief

  DAVID JOHNSTONE supreme commander, Alpha Defense

  OLLIE HESLOP ex-Sans member

  LOLO MAUDE Ollie’s lover

  NIKOLAJ lieutenant in London crime family

  MORGAN CREW

  DELLIAN squad leader

  YIRELLA strategy advisor

  TILLIANA tactician

  ELLICI tactician

  FALAR squad member

  JANC squad member

  URET squad member

  XANTE squad member

  MALLOT squad member

  OVAN squad leader

  TOMAR squad member

  KENELM captain of the Morgan

  WIM bridge officer

  CINREA bridge officer

  IMMANUEEL corpus human

  Timeline

  1901…Guglielmo Marconi transmits radio message across the Atlantic Ocean.

  1945…First nuclear explosion (above ground).

  1963…Limited Test Ban Treaty signed, prohibiting atmospheric nuclear bomb tests.

  2002…Neána cluster, near 31 Aquilae, detects electromagnetic pulse(s) from atomic bomb explosions on Earth.

  2005…Neána launch sublight mission to Earth.

  2041…First commercial laser fusion plant opens in Texas.

  2045…First commercial food printers introduced.

  2047…The US Defense Advanced Research Project Agency reveals artificial atomic bonding generator—the so-called force field.

  2049…US Congress passes act to create Homeland Shield Department, charged with building force fields around every city.

  2050…China forms Red Army’s City Protection Regiment, begins construction of Beijing shield.

  2050…Saudi kingdom installs mass food-print factories. Twenty percent of the kingdom’s remaining crude oil allocated for food printing.

  2050…Russia starts National People’s Defense Force; its shield generator project starts with Moscow.

  2052…European Federation creates UDA (Urban Defense Agency)—builds force fields over major European cities.

  2062…November: Kellan Rindstrom demonstrates quantum spatial entanglement (QSE) at CERN.

  2063…January: Ainsley Baldunio Zangari founds Connexion.

  2063…April: Connexion twins portal doors between Los Angeles and New York, charges ten dollars to go between cities.

  2063…Global stock market crash, car companies lose up to ninety percent of their share value. Shipping, rail, and airline stocks fall. Aerospace stocks rally as space entrepreneur companies announce ambitious asteroid development plans.

  2063…November: Space-X flies a QSE portal into LEO on a Falcon-10, providing open orbit access. Commencement of large-scale commercial space development.

  2066…Astro-X Corporation’s mission to Vesta. Establishment of Vesta colony.

  2066…Connexion Corp merges with emergent European, Japanese, and Australian public transit portal companies to form conglomerate. Major cities now portal networked. Noncommercial vehicle use declining rapidly.

  2066–2073…Thirty-nine national and commercial colony/development missions to asteroids (the Second California Rush—so called because of the number of American tech company CEOs involved). Large number of World Court injunctions filed by developing nations and left-wing group
s against exploitation of exo-resources by for-profit companies.

  2067…Globally, thirty cities now protected by shields, two hundred more under construction. Start of decline of conventional military forces. Phased air force and navy Reduction Treaty signed at UN by majority of governments. Armies reconfigured as counter-insurgency paramilitary regiments—numbers cut substantially.

  2068…Seven corporations established at Vesta. Astro-X completes its Libertyville habitat colony. Houses 3,000 people.

  2069…First solar powerwell portal dropped into sun by China National Sunpower Corporation. Five-kilometer-long magnetohydrodynamics chambers built at Vesta, positioned on large asteroids, outside Neptune orbit.

  2070…Armstrong resort dome assembled on Moon. Similar resorts under construction on Mars, Ganymede, and Titan.

  2071…All major cities on Earth linked by Connexion stations—except North Korea.

  2071…UN treaty forbidding nonequitable exo-resource exploitation. Any asteroid or planetary minerals mined for use by commercial companies must be equally distributed among all nations on Earth. US, China, and Russia refuse to sign. European Federation awards treaty Principal Acknowledgment status; starts to draw up its own nonexploitation regulations, where “excess profits” of asteroid development companies will be channeled into Federation foreign aid agencies. Commercial asteroid development companies reregister in non-signatory countries.

  2075…Seventeen self-sustaining habitats built in asteroid belt. Construction of Newholm starts at Vesta (by Libertyville)—fifty kilometers long, fifteen kilometers in diameter. Takes three years to form, two years to complete biosphere.

  2075…Fifty-five percent of Earth’s energy now comes from solar powerwells. Decommissioning of nuclear power stations begins, radioactive material flung into trans-Neptune space via portals.

  2076…Increasing number of asteroid developments become self-sustaining and Earth-exclusionary. Start of habitat independence movement.

  2077…Interstellar-X launches first starship, Orion, propelled by QSE portal solar plasma rocket. Destination: Alpha Centauri. Achieves .72 light speed.