Analog Science Fiction and Fact
Kindle Edition, 2013 © Penny Publications
* * *
Lockstep
Part II of IV Karl Schroeder | 32943 words
Illustrated by Mark Evans
The story so far:
Toby Wyatt McGonigal is lost in space. The eldest son of a family that's gambled its fortune on homesteading in the outer Solar System, he was on his way to stake a claim on a dormant comet when something disabled his ship's engines. When Toby wakes from cold sleep, he discovers that his little deep-space tug is now orbiting a dark, frozen planet— an orphan world just as lost in interstellar space as he is. Although he can see the shapes of cities on its surface, they too are cold and dead. Out of resources, he goes back into artificial hibernation, certain that he's not going to wake again....
He does, in a sumptuous bedroom whose windows look out on an amber, glowing sky. He's been rescued by Ammond and Persea, a rich-seeming couple who live in one of the cities on the formerly dormant planet, Lowdown. They tell him that fourteen thousand years have passed since he was lost. In that time, a vast civilization has grown up between the stars. The lockstep worlds hibernate for years at a time while their automated systems gather resources for a brief awakening that can last as little as a month. Ammond and Persea promise to tell him more, but meanwhile, they are treating him suspiciously like a prisoner. Other than them, the only person he's seen since waking is a mysterious girl around his age, who seemed to be burgling Ammond's estate. She had with her a strange cat-like creature. He can't get these two out of his mind.
When Ammond and Persea take him to the Europan ice planet of Little Auriga, Toby learns that he is indeed a pawn in some political maneuver. It seems that as the founding family in the deep-space worlds, the Mc-Gonigals were important, and Ammond and Persea want to exploit him in some way. Toby escapes from them with the help of one of the cat-like creatures he saw on Lowdown, and meets the girl he saw burgling Ammond's estate. Her name is Corva , and she and her friends are gypsy-like vagabonds known as stowaways. Their animal companions, denners, are synthetic life forms that help them to hibernate without using the official cold-sleep machinery of the lockstep.
Corva tells Toby that the thousands of planets in the lockstep are suffering under a tyranny, and that Toby is important because, well, he owns them all . He is the heir of the family that founded the lockstep system. This comes as a shock, but that's nothing compared to what she tells him next. Although fourteen thousand years have passed in real-time since Toby was lost, only forty have passed for the lockstep's founders because of their regular hibernation. Toby's brother and sister are both alive, and it's his brother, Peter , who rules the lockstep empire.
Peter has learned that Toby is back from the dead—and Peter wants Toby dead.
Toby has no time to think about any of this, because Ammond and Persea are after them, and so he, Corva, and their friends stow away on an outbound freighter, going into cold-sleep again in a bid to escape the gathering forces that are pursuing Toby.
Chapter 6
The airship was a flying wing over a mile long, its transparent skin made of something so thin that you couldn't see it head-on; only in its outward curves could you make out the oily iridescence of its shape. It was as if the ion engines and passenger gondolas were suspended in midair. Toby had loved it—and why not? He was only fourteen.
They'd been on their way to orbit for two days now, circling the Earth at ever-greater altitudes. The ionosphere was so thin here that satellites could plow right through it—but a light enough airplane with a mile-wide wing could use it for lift, and fly all the way to orbit. This was the way poor people went into space. Mom and Dad had decided on a slow leave-taking, rather than a quick rocket to orbit and then on to Sedna. Until an hour ago, Toby had thought they were indulging an uncommon nostalgia.
But then, just after lunch as he'd been wandering the long galleries that looked down on the strangely patterned landscapes seventy miles below, the ship had shuddered—just ever-so slightly. Peter ran up, a blot of dark, disheveled clothing and hair like a moving stain on the perfect white plastic surfaces of the corridor. "An airship just docked!" he'd cried. "An invisible one!"
"More invisible than this old thing?" But Toby was intrigued. Over the next twenty minutes they watched as the suborbital stealth rocket (now visible) disgorged cargo and passengers, each of whom Mom and Dad greeted with handshakes and serious expressions.
Peter had nudged Toby at one point. "I know that guy. He's Nate what's-his-name, the composer-thing guy." Ever-precise, that was Peter—but Toby did recognize the long-limbed man with the easy grin. More than a composer, he invented whole genres, and was famous for starting bands of startling and varied styles. He'd stay with one just long enough to propel it to international fame and drive a new trend into the spotlight; then he'd be off in a new direction. Like the McGonigals, he wasn't a trillionaire, merely rich and famous—which counted for everything, or nothing at all as Toby was learning. "But what's he doing here?" Peter stared as if he could burn the secret out of the man with his gaze. "Is he coming with us?"
The answer, which was yes, had come some time after the stealth craft had broken off from the airship to plummet back into the air above the failed state of France. Toby and Peter were standing at the gallery rail, pointing out this or that detail along a filigreed coastline beneath their feet, when a shadow joined them. They looked up to see Nate standing a few meters away. He was gazing down too, his expression more pensive than Peter's.
"Hey!" Peter went over to him. "You're that guy, right?"
Nate what's-his-name raised an eyebrow, then stuck out his hand for Peter to shake. "Nathan Kenani. You're Carter's boys, aren't you?"
"Whatcha doing?" Peter nodded at the passing landscapes. "You coming with us?" To Toby's surprise, Kenani nodded.
"I can't do it anymore," he said. "I mean, look at that." He pointed down. They were passing over southern China; like everywhere else on the planet, it was divided into two kinds of landscape: sprawling city, and empty, verdant parkland. One was a gray mottle from this height, the other smooth green.
The gray was where billions of people lived all heaped atop one another, struggling to survive in the micro-economies they could cobble together from garbage and wind-power in the ruins of their ancestors' dreams. The green was the estates of the trillionaires, who let in no one but their ecologists and a few people they wanted to reward or bribe.
The green was much bigger than the gray.
Kenani sighed. "I just wanted to look at it all one last time. Before they take out my implants, I mean." He tapped the side of his head.
"So it's true?" Peter was practically hopping up and down. "They say you got more than anybody!"
"Not really." Kenani smiled lopsidedly. "But I do have auditory augments, and visual ones, and tactile. I can see seventeen primary colors, and hear way down into infra-sound and up past where dogs can go. But your mother says they're likely to kill me during her new hibernation process. Something about different expansion and contraction rates than human flesh... so I'm having them out."
"In Consensus, either everybody gets them or nobody does," announced Peter. "They're an unfair advantage."
Kenani looked puzzled. "Consensus?"
"It's a gameworld we've been building for... well, months and months," Toby explained.
Peter said, "No security without equality of opportunity!"
"Pete's just discovered socialism. Last week it was meritocracy."
Kenani laughed. "Well, that's cool." He gazed sadly down at the lands below. "I'd have everybody ge
t them, then. I'm going to miss all this richness."
"But why?" Toby shook his head. "Why are you coming with us? Are you sneaking away?"
"Yes, I'm sneaking away, along with an assorted lot of criminals, subversives, and dissidents; scientists and what-not." Kenani indicated the passenger modules behind the gallery. "Most of us are just fed up living in a world that's never going to change. Where there're no new frontiers. Everything's owned—I mean, there's not a centimeter of beach-front anywhere in the world where the likes of you and I can set foot! And every last bit of the solar system's been surveyed and claims staked. It's all we've got, and all we're ever going to have. And they own it."
Passing below was another area of city—but this one wasn't a roiled gray chaos like the others. It was more like an interconnected labyrinth of buildings, stretching on for kilo-meter after kilometer, with no streets or windows to break the geometric perfection of its shapes. This place, and others like it, was where all the resources of the planets were funneled. It was a machine city, an entire economy dedicated to serving the needs and whims of the trillionaires. They had no need for human workers. They had their bots.
"In Consensus, nobody can own more than a hundred robots," said Peter. Kenani snorted.
"Good luck with that," he said. "Then again, why not? Make it Sedna instead of Consensus, kid, and I'll back you all the way."
Thrum, thrum.
The sound was everywhere—filling the Universe outside and roving through his belly and chest, his throat and his skull. Toby could feel it rattling down his arms and legs, awakening a painful tingle in them. He could feel it coursing up his spine, wrapping his jaw and tongue, penetrating his glued-shut eyelids.
He struggled to open those eyes, but when he finally did he saw nothing. A groan escaped his lips and he felt his head loll forward. It came to him that he was sitting on some sort of surface, his knees bent up, arms lifeless at his side. And with him—
He felt the denner's fur brush his face. The little creature was climbing around and over him, nudging him with its head. All the while, its rumbling song vibrated through Toby, awakening his body from an impossibly long sleep.
He took a ragged breath. "How long," he tried to say. It came out as a weak croak, but Orpheus seemed encouraged. He butted Toby's cheek and the vibration became louder still.
Now Toby felt cold too, a biting attack on all parts of his body at once. Something deep within him was fighting against it, a radiance like a tiny inner sun. He was running on battery power, he realized, much of it supplied by his own implants. Not all of it, though—Corva had said, with a straight face, that Orpheus would heat him to life using microwave energy.
Thinking of Corva brought home to him where he must still be: bagged in a shipping container en route to a world she'd called... was it Wallop? He could feel the survival bag wrapped around him like a blanket. In fact, even when he kept his head still there was a dizzying sensation of motion. Maybe it was simple vertigo. Maybe, though, the container was on the move.
"Corva?" Toby made a supreme effort and unbent himself, reaching up a hand to cautiously unzip the bag. Fearsomely cold air puffed in, waking him even further. He stretched his right arm out of the membrane and his fingers made contact with another bag. Corva wasn't moving, but he could feel the vibration coming from her cocoon: Wrecks was hard at work.
"Shylif!" There was no answer. Was it possible he was dead? And Corva too? What then would Wrecks be up to?
No, there was another possibility, and however unlikely it seemed, it must be true. Skinny little Orpheus had managed to awaken Toby before the others.
He reached up to stroke the denner's fur. "You're amazing, you know that?"
At that moment he felt a falling sensation and all around him the tightly wrapped packages shifted. He heard plastic wrap tearing— he hadn't been imagining movement after all. Then, with a bone-jarring thump, the container struck something and stopped moving.
"Corva?" he asked again. There was no response, just the purring of Wrecks. Orpheus, he suddenly realized, had fallen silent. It was Toby's own shivering that was sustaining his body heat now, and that wasn't going to last long.
He felt terribly weak, as though he'd been sick and bedridden for days. This was nothing like the cicada beds, which pumped you full of sugars and nanotechnology that would fix you as good as new before you even woke up. Toby retched, but nothing came out; his stomach was empty and demanding to be filled.
He reached out again, found Corva's knee, and felt around for her backpack. Opening it was hard, and he toppled over twice, scraping his chin on the corner of a crate. But inside he found some food bars and a bottle of water.
He brought out the food and water and eagerly devoured a bar. Then, he hesitated.
Corva and her friends had helped him, at no apparent profit to themselves. Then again, Ammond and Persea had seemed just as selfless at first. Maybe the stowaways had no agenda beyond simple human decency. Or maybe the fact that they'd tracked him between worlds, awaiting a chance to break him out of his captivity, simply meant they had their own use for him, yet to be revealed. Corva had hinted as much.
She had also promised to finish telling him about his family. Yeah, maybe—but now that he was free of Ammond and Persea's subtle censorship, he could surely find out the rest of the story himself. He didn't need Corva for that.
To hell with other people's agendas. There was one companion he knew he could rely on. He found another bar and offered it to Orpheus, who purred like crazy before attacking it. Toby gave a great sigh to quiet his inner arguers, and said, "Come on, Orph, let's see where we are. "He groped around for the twisty passage through the boxes; after a moment Orpheus got the idea, and with a chitter guided Toby into the correct gap. Moments later they were at the shipping container's airlock.
Toby patted along the side of the door until he found a control pad. As he touched it a little keypad glowed green, startlingly bright and the first thing he'd seen for... how many years would it be?
After his eyes adjusted he peered at it, and saw that it was reading a breathable atmosphere outside. Now that he was standing up he could feel the drag of gravity on him too, and it felt... well, just about normal, despite his weakness. They were either on a rotating station somewhere, or this was a pretty sizable planet. He ordered the lock to cycle and a few seconds later, the outer door opened.
It wasn't too bright out there, but he had to squint even so. What he was looking at wasn't at all clear. Light percolated in from the sides, but right in front of him was a kind of wavering, streaky darkness. It seemed somehow familiar but he couldn't figure out what it was.
Then a crooked line of white shot from on high down into plunging depths, revealing vast billowing clouds to all sides, and he saw that the streaks were runnels and beads of rain coursing down a transparent wall just a few meters in front of him. He only just had time to realize this before thunder banged off that wall; in the distance another bolt of lightning vaulted between two towers of cloud.
Toby was so busy gaping at the bottomless well of downpouring mist that he nearly toppled right off the lip of the shipping container. Swinging wildly, he managed to grab a frost-painted handle, and looked down. He was three up on a stack of containers; five more loomed overhead. This stack was just one in a row of them. The place must be a warehouse.
Grumbling to himself, Orpheus was already climbing nimbly down. Toby spared one more glance at the transparent wall, and was rewarded as a flash-flicker of lightning unveiled the scene for another instant. Clouds above, clouds below, blackness beyond them in all directions. And rain, rain in sheets and billows falling everywhere.
He made it, barely, down to the floor, and his landing rang it hollowly, as if it were a lightweight deck and not a floor at all. Everything in sight was made of plastic or the transparent stuff of the outer wall. Strange. Also strange was his sudden perception that the wall leaned out at quite an angle, and curved gradually to either side.
"Where are we?"
"We're on Wallop, mate."
He whirled and nearly fell. Jaysir laughed.
Scrawny he might be, but right now Corva's friend looked a lot better than Toby felt. His complicated cargo bot stood a few paces behind him, hoses and wires trailing behind it. "You're the first up, are you?" Jaysir continued.
"Uh, yeah." His voice barely worked; he'd sounded worse on Lowdown, but that was because of the air. His whole throat felt dehydrated.
Jaysir pursed his lips. "You're not waiting around? Corva and Shylif could use a hand, I'm pretty sure."
Toby looked down; until this moment he hadn't actually been seriously considering walking away. He met Jaysir's gaze. "I dunno. What would you do, in my situation?"
"Hmm." Jaysir scratched his chin, then ticked some points off on his fingers. "Well, first of all, you don't know anything. You don't even know where you are. You don't know where you're going—"
"I'm going to Destrier."
Jaysir paused, one finger atop another. "You're going to Destrier? No crap?" Then he laughed and shook his head. "She put you up to this? Or was it your idea?"
"Totally my idea. Mom's waiting for me. That's what Corva said. "
Jaysir resumed ticking off items. "... And you haven't got a clue what that means."
"Corva told me about my family, Jaysir. That Peter's the chairman, Evayne's alive too and my Mom... she's on Destrier. So, that's where I'm going."
"Maybe, but... listen, Toby, you can't just go from waking up to deep diving on the same day. It takes time to recover from hibernation. That's why the standard turn lasts a month. That's why nobody lives in the Weekly for very long... You can't just find a container bound for Destrier and climb in with your little guy. You're going to have to spend a few weeks in the city first—"
"I was only on Little Auriga for a couple of days! And you too!"
Analog Science Fiction and Fact - 2014-01 Page 1