The Ring of Charon the-1

by Roger MacBride Allen

  Creamcheese sniffed, a bit uneasily. “Don’t exaggerate. So we buy up a few luxuries, hire a few Earthers like that Noisemaker geek to push the buttons down. It keeps us from polluting ourselves with knowledge we don’t need. As for the imports, mere fripperies for our amusements.”

  Ohio couldn’t help noticing that the Purple slang was dropping out of Creamcheese’s words as well. Maybe he had her attention. “That all used to be true,” he said. “But every year, we’ve done less and less of our own work. The Naked Purple ideal called for each of us to do work when needful—but the richer we got, the more that definition of needful started to slide. Until we were buying luxuries like food and airlock repair. We hired outsiders to do our work for us, until we got to where we were buying our air from them because we were sloppy about running the airplant. At least that I put a stop to when I got stuck with this job. I bought us a new airplant and trained a crew to run it. But things like that cost money. Dirty Earth money.

  “We’re dependent on Earth. We have to buy from Earth, or starve. With so many ships lost, it’s going to be a lot tougher to resupply us. If they’ll even come. With that CORE thing about to paste the Saint Anthony probe, who’ll want to risk the same treatment just to fly us some food? We might have to evacuate the habitat, move everyone back to Earth—but we don’t have the ships to do that on our own, either. At the very least, we’ll need emergency supplies launched from Earth to tide us over while we buckle down and make ourselves self-sufficient.

  “No matter how it breaks, we’ll need help from Earth. Which will be tough to get if the people of Earth accuse us of allowing the Solar Area—damn it, the Solar System—to be destroyed.” Ohio felt a sudden, passionate need to call things by their right names, with no games. “We’re going to need Earth’s goodwill.”

  Ohio Template Windbag looked around the shabby room, and the faces of the aggressively, lovably eccentric people in it. There was something oddly sad about them. Not just now, but something that had always been there. “The game’s over,” he said. With a sudden pang of sorrow, he remembered his own pre-Purple past, teaching school, and the desolated faces of the children when the rains came during recess.

  Especially the lonely children, the ones that nobody would play with. They seemed to be the ones that gloried most of all in the open space of the school yard, most loved the one place they could at least be themselves and play their secret, solitary games without interruption.

  Suddenly the blue skies would be gone, with the fat drops plashing down everywhere, thunder and lightning rumbling threats across the sky, and their secret worlds would be washed away. “Rain’s come, fun’s over,” Ohio whispered to the sad little faces he still saw. “It’s time to come inside,” he said quietly. “Back inside, and back to work.” The room was quiet. Even Creamcheese Drone Deluxe had nothing to say.

  Ohio took that as a sign. He punched up the intercom, switched it over to the channel that worked, and called Chelated Noisemaker Extreme. “Frank,” he said at last, “I think we’re all about agreed up here. Why don’t you get that datatap dancing?”

  * * *

  The Sphere had many duties, but its capacities were great, and there was no prize greater than a new life-bearing world. The price—in risk, in treasure—was huge, and certainly this would not have been the time it would have deliberately sent out a call, declaring itself ready to absorb a new world and ready to assist in the construction of a new Sphere. But the Sphere was flexible, adaptable in its thought processes, and determined to make the best of the situation, find the advantages to itself inside the crisis.

  Such as the capture of a splendid new world, one that deserved the best of treatment. Preparing a place for it had been a great strain. Gathering up a Keeper Ring and an anchor wormhole was normally a leisurely process, but this time the Sphere had been forced to do it all within a few brief seconds. Matching the new world’s previous environment of heating and tidal effects so closely in such a short space of time had been a remarkable achievement.

  But the job had required speed, and the placement of an unprogrammed Keeper Ring. The Ring had been built and grown long, long ago, and placed in storage, left to sleep, untutored, until there was a world that needed care. When the message from the Caller had come, the Sphere had found a black hole that matched the new world’s tidal needs, and then used a dangerous self-transiting technique to move the Ring-hole ensemble into position, manipulating the Keeper Ring so that it served as both ends of the same wormhole.

  All the while, the new world was kept cycling through a whole series of transit points as the Sphere juggled to hold on to it. At last the new Keeper was ready, and the Keeper, under the Sphere’s direct control, pulled the new world into a safe and stable orbit.

  It had been a dangerous and complex job, and the Sphere had been running the Keeper Ring directly ever since, transporting new-mode Worldeaters to the new planet’s old star system, closely monitoring the somewhat archaic Caller Ring that was running the planet-stripping operation there, vectoring the Shepherd to intercept the large piece of debris that was falling toward the new world.

  But the Sphere had many duties. It could not focus this much attention on this single operation indefinitely. The Sphere, when other duties allowed, continued to download all that a Keeper must know: images of the Sphere’s ancestry and history, images that demonstrated this procedure and that, examples of commands and their results, and endless demonstrations of a Keeper’s duties.

  The Keeper took it all in eagerly, felt itself awakening as it absorbed enough data to understand its duties more fully. Its somewhat rigid mind was primed for this knowledge set, hungry for it.

  It never occurred to the Keeper or to the Sphere that there might be another listening. The very idea was alien, inconceivable to them. Neither of them could even imagine a being such as Frank Barlow, let alone his actions.

  But that didn ‘t stop Barlow from listening, and gathering in his data.

  * * *

  The boost out from Earth had gone well, and now the Nova was in free-fall, moving toward its deceleration point, a few hundred thousand kilometers astern of the Target One planet. An easy zero-gee flight, then a braking burn to slide the ship into orbit around T-One. Without the burn, the Terra Nova would sail right on past the new world it sought.

  The Universe outside the Terra Nova might be in turmoil, but life aboard the big ship was settling into a comfortable routine.

  Dianne Steiger watched the bridge main display screen as the two radar tracks—the Saint Anthony and the CORE—intercepted. She watched on an aux screen as the carrier-wave signal died, watched the smaller target vanish off the main screen as the larger sailed majestically on. The Charonian CORE had done its work, and the Saint Anthony was dead.

  Dianne pulled out a cigarette and lit it thoughtfully, manipulating it with her new left hand, just for the practice. She took a deep drag and pointedly ignored Gerald MacDougal’s coughing fit. She held the smoke in her lungs for a moment and smiled with real satisfaction. There were advantages to being the captain of a starship. An air system built to last generations had to be able to handle a cigarette—and as captain, no one aboard could tell her not to smoke.

  One minor mystery was cleared up—the COREs obviously used some form of radar—crude, arrogantly powerful radar—to do their tracking. That was why they emitted such energetic radio waves. There had been a fair amount of speculation aboard the Terra Nova as to how the CORE would make the kill. Lasers and ship-to-ship missiles had been the most popular guesses, but the CORE had simply crashed into the probe. A direct kinetic-impact kill.

  That hadn’t surprised Dianne. There was nothing subtle about the Charonian way of doing things. They were masters of direct, brute-force action. They took what they wanted, did what they pleased, plainly never thinking that anything might oppose them.

  She turned her head toward Gerald, sitting beside her on the bridge. “All right, Gerald. You tell me. Why the hell did t
hey wait so long to stop the Anthony! Why did they allow the probe to operate so long, and why didn’t they jam its transmissions, or attempt to capture it instead of destroying it?”

  Gerald shrugged. “Because the COREs aren’t programmed to think in those terms. And whatever it is that programs them, which I suppose is ultimately the Dyson Sphere, doesn’t think that way either.” The Dyson Sphere doing the thinking, Gerald thought. Yes, of course. By some miracle, Marcia and this Sondra Berghoff had read his message about von Neumanns, and understood, and, miracle on top of miracle, had taken his ideas to places he had never imagined. Praise be to God for His blessings, Gerald told himself, deeply thankful for all of it. But especially for the knowledge that Marcia was alive.

  “But the Anthony was obviously sent to gather and transfer information,” Dianne was saying. “How could any intelligent species not realize that the Anthony was a threat?”

  “Because they aren’t intelligent in any sense of the term we understand,” Gerald said. “They are machines programmed by machines. What’s confused us about them is that some of the machines are living creatures, of a sort. But they are as programmed, as artificial, as the mechanical devices.”

  “But what’s the point of it all? What do they all do it for! What’s the point of a huge machine that does nothing but keep itself running?”

  Gerald smiled sadly. “You’ve just asked: ‘What’s the point of being alive?’ That question is just as important, and just as meaningless, if you’re a mechanical life-form or a biotic one. They survive in order to survive, just as we do. And, I might add, they do a very impressive job of it. But we’re thinking of the Multisystem as a network of machines. Maybe it would be more accurate to think of them all as part of one big entity.”

  Captain Dianne Steiger thought for a long moment. “You’re saying that the whole Multisystem—the Sphere, the Rings, the COREs, the artificial animals and the robots, the captured planets and stars—all amount to one organism!”

  “It’s possible. Either that, or a highly coordinated alliance of linked creatures. Or some third thing, between those two. But whatever it is, we’re going to have a tough time understanding what makes them tick.”

  “Okay, but if it’s all one creature, then the COREs are just a subsystem. They’re like white blood cells, attacking an invader…” Dianne leaned back in her chair, puffing on her cigarette, staring into space. Suddenly her eyes popped wide. She sat straight up and pulled the cigarette from her mouth. “Attacking an invader as soon as it threatened to crash into something valuable.”

  Gerald frowned, and then he got it. “Like a planet.”

  “They never regarded the Anthony as a spy probe, or a radio relay. They don’t need things like that.” She stubbed out the cigarette into an ashtray. “They saw it as a rock that was going to fall on Earth, and diverted the closest interceptor to make the kill. That’s what the COREs are—meteor interceptors, orbiting the worlds of the Multisystem to protect them from spaceside debris.”

  Gerald’s face went pale. “If we change our present course, make our braking burn to intercept the Target One planet, they’re going to see the Terra Nova as a rock about to fall on Target One. The COREs around Target One will pound us into a pulp.”

  Dianne Steiger nodded and tried to remain calm as she felt a cold hand wrap itself around her heart. “I think you’re right, but we’ve got to test the theory. Let’s hope it’s way off base. Because if it’s right, we can never come near any of these worlds.”

  * * *

  The Flying Dutchman, Dianne thought again. The name appeared in her mind, and nothing she could do seemed capable of forcing it out. Dianne remembered the name of the old legend, but almost nothing else. What was it that had happened to him? Had he been doomed never to land, or just never to return home?

  She blinked hard and tried to concentrate. “Deploy decoys and fire their engines remotely as per plan and schedule,” she ordered. Was her voice steady? Never to land, a life that echoed a ghost story. A life that would become a ghost story. Hadn’t there been a historical character who inspired the Dutchman legend? What tales would her endless journey inspire? The prospect chilled her very bones.

  She watched as the first of the decoys leapt away. The things were utterly simple. It had taken the machine shop only an hour or two to build them. Big square-corner radar reflectors attached to small rocket engines. The reflectors would provide a brilliant echo to any radar beam directed at them. The radar-sensing COREs should be able to see them easily enough.

  There were eight of the decoys, and it was the work of a few minutes to deploy them all. Their rocket engines fired, and the decoys shifted course toward the Target One world. Two were aimed directly at the planet, the others pointed to miss T-One at distances varying from a few hundred kilometers to nearly half a million.

  The decoys fell away from the Terra Nova. Their engines flared on, performing high-gee burns that shifted their orbits violently, with far more stress than a human crew would ever survive. But the faster the decoys got in there, the sooner Dianne would have some data—and the sooner she could reach a decision about what to do.

  Spacecraft move fast, but the scale of space is huge. The decoys, moving at tremendous speeds, seemed to crawl across the display screens at the most leisurely of rates. Dianne Steiger settled into her captain’s chair, ready for a long wait.

  She didn’t get it. Mere minutes after the decoys had completed their burns, six COREs, accelerating at a terrifying rate, suddenly lifted out of orbit toward the decoys. The navigation computers hurriedly projected their courses, assuming constant boost, and showed intercepts with all but the two most distant decoys. Dianne stared at the screen, and read the message there. The Terra Nova could not come within three hundred thousand kilometers of a planet without being destroyed.

  She smiled coldly, humorlessly. Her original orders had been to explore the Dyson Sphere, and she had rejected that because it was too dangerous. She had insisted on a safer flight first. And now she wasn’t even able to get near the closest planet.

  “Ma’am,” the navigator said quietly. “We’re coming up on our decision point. As per your orders, I have trajectory solutions laid in for a continued free orbit of the Sunstar, a distant orbit of T-One, or a return path to Earth. Propulsion needs your orders.”

  Dianne glanced involuntarily behind her, thinking of the Earth they had left behind. Every world of this Multisystem had to have been stolen the same way Earth was, and then enveloped with a shield of COREs. Sooner or later—probably sooner—Earth would receive the same protection. Perhaps outgoing spacecraft would be unmolested, though Dianne would be unwilling to bet much on that chance. But no returning spacecraft could land. Sweet Jesus, it was worse than that, she realized. The COREs would attack anything that even came near Earth. Like satellites and habitats. All of them would have to be evacuated now, before the people on board were stranded, or killed outright by impacting COREs. Any replacement for the Saint Anthony would be smashed to scrap almost as soon as it arrived.

  And after the COREs arrived at Earth, the Terra Nova could not return home. Ever. Perhaps no other ship could lift from Earth without being destroyed. Ever. Space-flight would end. Even communication between Earth and a spacecraft would be tough, with the COREs’ radars jamming virtually every usable comm frequency. But what was the point in worrying about contact with Earth if no ship could ever leave Earth again?

  Except if the only ship away from Earth stayed away. The Terra Nova had been built to travel between star systems, to outlast journeys that might last hundreds of years. So long as she never approached a planet, the big ship could continue in operation long after the last crewman aboard had died of natural causes.

  Or else, if Dianne turned the ship back now, her crew could see their families again before they died.

  No, she thought. Suppose, some day, a way was found to beat the COREs and the rest of the Charonians, and the plan needed a ship in space for it to w
ork? Or suppose there was some vital discovery waiting, one that could be made only from a spacecraft, far away from Earth? What other, unimagined doors would slam shut if the Nova retreated? And what fate would humanity deserve, what future would it be worthy of, if danger was met so meekly?

  Dianne straightened her back, stared at the display screen, and spoke quietly. “Advise propulsion to stand down. Continued free orbit, no use of main engines required. Here we stay. We can do no other.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Becoming Shiva

  The clouds of dust and debris piled up in ugly choking rings about the planet Venus. The storms of Venus roiled and bridled in new and terrifying ways, tortured by the Charonian machine-monsters on the surface. A dark spot appeared in the glaring clouds, large enough to be visible from orbit. For the first time in human history, a portion of the Venusian surface was visible from space.

  It was a mountain, impossibly huge, climbing up out of the clouds, swelling upward and outward moment by moment, until its upper slopes were outside the planet’s atmosphere. It was an elongated cone, almost a caricature of a volcano—a classic, perfect cartoon volcano.

  Suddenly, it belched smoke and flame, and a column of fire blasted out into space, glowing hot molten rock flying clear of the planet.