As always the variation in life-forms across the cosmos was extraordinarily wide, but most shared certain basics of their physical design. Almost all of them stored information about themselves in their own complicated structures, rather than in an internal genetic data store, as humans one day would: for these creatures their genotype was their phenotype, as if they were made wholly of DNA.
Their way of communicating would have seemed ferocious to a human. A speaker would modify its listener’s memories directly, by firing quagma pellets into them; it was a message carried in a spray of bullets. They even reproduced rather like DNA molecules. They opened out their structures, like flowers unfolding, and constructed a mirror-image version of themselves by attracting raw material from the surrounding soup of loose quarks. These “quagmites” were not quite like the creatures humans would one day encounter in the Galaxy’s Core, but they were their remote ancestors.
There was little in common in the physical basis of human and quagmite; a quagmite was not much bigger than an atomic nucleus. But the largest of the quagma creatures were composed of a similar number of particles to the atoms which would comprise a human body. So humans and quagmites were comparable in internal complexity, and their inner lives shared a similar richness. Many humans would have appreciated the best quagmite poetry—if they could have survived being bombarded by it.
Meanwhile, the quagmite creatures shared their universe with older forms of life.
The ancient spacetime-chemistry creatures, having survived yet another cosmic transition, gradually found ways to accommodate themselves to the latest climate, even though to them it was cold and dark and dead. In their heyday there had been no “matter” in the normal sense. But now they found they could usefully form symbiotic relationships with creatures formed of condensate matter: extended structures locked into a single quantum state. A new kind of being ventured cautiously through the light-filled spaces, like insects with “bodies” of condensate and “wings” of spacetime defects. It was the formation of a new kind of ecology, emerging from fragments of the old and new. But symbiosis and the construction of composite creatures from lesser components were eternal tactics for life, eternal ways of surviving changed conditions.
In the unimaginably far future humans would call the much-evolved descendants of these composite forms “Xeelee.”
The proto-Xeelee were, meanwhile, aware of another species of matter born out of this turbulent broth. This would one day be called dark matter by human scientists, for it would bond with other types of matter only loosely, through gravity and the weakest nuclear force. There was a whole hierarchy of particles of this stuff, even a sort of chemistry. This faint stuff passed through the quark-cluster cities and the nests of the proto-Xeelee alike as if they didn’t exist. But it was there—and, like the Xeelee, this dark matter was going to be around for good.
As the endless expansion continued, the quagmites swarmed through their quagma broth, fighting and loving and dying. The oldest of them told their legends of the singularity. The young scoffed, but listened in secret awe.
It seemed to the quagmites that the ages that had preceded their own had been impossibly brief, a mere flash in the afterglow of the singularity. But it was a common error. The pace of life scaled to temperature: if you lived hot, you lived fast. The quagmites did not suspect that the creatures who had inhabited earlier, warmer ages had crammed just as many experiences—just as much “life”—into their brief instants of time. As the universe expanded, every generation, living slower than the last, saw only a flash of heat and light behind it, nothing but a cold dark tunnel ahead—and each generation thought that it was only now that a rich life was possible.
The comfortable era of the quagmites couldn’t last forever; nothing ever did. It was when the universe was thirty times older than it was at the end of the matter-antimatter conflict that the first signs of the quagmites’ final disaster were detected.
Chapter 48
After five weeks of Kimmer’s ten, Exultant Squadron was to be transferred to Orion Rock, from which the assault on Chandra would be mounted.
It took three days for Rock 492 to be evacuated: the living areas emptied out, the squadron’s fifteen greenships lifted off the surface. When Pirius Red had first arrived on 492 it had been a garbage heap, but now that it was time to leave he was sorry. After all, he and Torec had taken this ruin and made it, not just their base of operations, but their home.
And, of his motley assembly of superannuated veterans and misfits, two had died in operations run out of this Rock. So there was blood soaked into its silvery regolith, human bones buried in its loose dirt, as they were buried on a billion other worlds and moons and asteroids across the face of the Galaxy.
On the last night, as the close-out crews did their work, Pirius kept Torec back. In their skinsuits they wandered through the empty chambers, the stripped-out barracks and refectories and dispensaries, the big engineering bays with their floors grooved and shaped to take equipment now removed. They could hear systems shutting down, one by one, the vibrations diminished, the circulation of air and water stopping, as if the Rock itself was slowly dying. As they walked from one chamber to the next, the light cut out behind them, so they were always walking out of darkness.
In the last chamber, they found a corner where they unzipped their skinsuits. The air was rapidly losing its heat, making them both shiver deliciously. They pushed the seams of their suits together and sealed themselves inside.
The inertial generators shut down. They found themselves rising from the floor. All around them specks of asteroid dust, disturbed by the Rock’s residual vibrations, rose up to make the air sparkle.
Deep inside the Cavity, a long way inside the Front, Orion Rock was buried in the North Arm of the Baby Spiral.
To reach it, Exultant Squadron formed a tight convoy. The ten prime greenships, with five backups, were at the center. All the greenships had been modified with the gear for Project Prime Radiant, but the equipment was bedded in now, and after the hours of training flights the crew knew how to handle their ungainly craft. The fighting ships were accompanied by equipment freighters, tenders, and other support craft, and a handful of command vessels, including Commissary Nilis’s corvette. One massive Spline warship loomed over them. Bristling with weapons, its moonlike bulk dwarfed its charges.
It was an unlikely flotilla, Pirius supposed. It was strange to reflect that on this handful of battered, hastily modified old hulks might rest the destiny of the Galaxy.
The group sailed through the Front and made their way down the spine of the Baby Spiral’s arm, moving in a series of FTL hops and sublight-drive glides. Despite the time pressure, the only way to proceed was cautiously: the spiral arm was a crowded corridor of molecular dust, drifting rock, and young stars, a difficult jaunt. But there was so much noise and clutter here in this tunnel of bombarded gas that there was a good chance they would remain undetected by Xeelee scouts all the way in.
After two sleepless days and nights, with the crews stressed-out and weary, they reached Orion Rock.
Pirius, sitting in his pilot’s blister, gaped. He had never seen anything like it. The Rock shone.
Like every asteroid of its size, it was an aggregate shape as lumpy as a clenched fist, deeply pocked by impact craters. But on this Rock the surface had been worked, every square centimeter of it. Every crater hosted a landing pad or a dry dock or a portal, and away from the craters the land had a peculiar ridged texture. As they approached, Pirius saw it was covered by a dense scribble of trenches and foxholes, zigzagging at precise ninety-degree corners. It was ornate, even decorative, like a maze. You could tell that people had been here for a long time.
Orion had been spawned out of random accretions in this spiral arm long ago, and had since drifted down its center line. As it had required no human intervention to steer it onto a path that directed it straight at the Xeelee concentrations, the Rock was a marvelous natural blind. It had been occupi
ed by humans for a thousand years, and the results of that occupation were visible on its surface—and yet it was still unsuspected as a military asset by mankind’s foe.
The greenships and their escorts settled on a landing pad at the center of the largest crater—all save the big Spline, which took up a watchful position directly overhead, like a fleshy eye.
All the crews were eager to get out of their stinking skinsuits, and to eat, bathe, screw, and otherwise get the tension of the flight out of their systems. But Marshal Kimmer came on the loop and ordered the whole squadron from Pirius Red on down to form up before his command corvette. There was nothing for it but to comply gracefully.
They clambered down to a surface of some black, hard substance so smooth and flat it was almost slippery. Near Kimmer’s corvette, Pila, Nilis, Kimmer, Guild-master Eliun and various other command staff and civilians gathered in a loose circle. Captain Marta was here, the stern training officer from Quin Base who Pirius had drafted at the suggestion of his older self to oversee the set up of operations on this Rock. Their skinsuits looked bright and fresh, and the military types were adorned with animated decorations.
And a Silver Ghost rolled complacently above the polished ground, unperturbed by the vacuum and hard radiation of the Core.
Pirius had practiced no parade drill with his squadron; there had been no time for such luxuries. Still, he drew them up in good order, though he accepted a little assistance from Commander Darc, who helped get the rows spaced out and lined up properly. Compared to the glittering gathering of commanders and civilians, the greenship crews looked shabby and exhausted. But as they stood to attention—Burden and Torec, Jees with her silvery prostheses returning sharp highlights from the starlight, even his own older self, all of them in scuffed and grimy skinsuits—Pirius felt a burst of pride.
A party approached. In the lead marched a block of soldiers in gleaming white skinsuits, following a track that ran arrow-straight from the crater wall. Pirius estimated there must be a thousand of them. Their commanders stood to attention on discs that hovered a meter above the floor.
On the squadron’s comm loop, Pirius heard muttering. “I don’t believe it,” Blue said. “It’s a welcoming committee.”
“Belay that,” Pirius Red murmured. “We’re going to have to work with these characters. Let’s get off to a good start.” The muttering subsided.
The lead party on those discs slowed smoothly before Marshal Kimmer. The marching troops came to a crisp halt, as precise as bots.
As the welcoming committee clambered down from their discs, Nilis, unmistakable in his antiquated skinsuit, gestured clumsily at Pirius. Reluctantly, Pirius abandoned his squadron and walked forward to join Kimmer and the other dignitaries. He stood beside Pila; she looked amused at his discomfiture.
The leader of the party was an extraordinarily tall and skinny man who, despite the careful tailoring of his skinsuit, was stiff and clumsy, and he had some trouble getting down off his disc. This official appeared to do a double take when he saw a Silver Ghost among the new arrivals.
Wheezing, the official puffed himself up and stepped forward to face Kimmer. The two of them looked oddly similar, Pirius thought; tall, thin, elegantly formed. “Marshal, welcome to Orion Rock!”
“Thank you—”
But Kimmer was taken aback when poles sprouted out of the hoverdiscs and thrust toward the stars. Virtual flags, adorned with the green tetrahedral sigil of free mankind, began to ripple in a nonexistent breeze.
The tall official said, “My name is Boote the Forty-Third—Captain Boote, I should say. I command here, and I place my base at your disposal. I am the one-hundred-and-nineteenth captain of this station, and the forty-third to wear the proud name of Boote.” He spoke comprehensibly, but he had a very strong, clipped accent. “For one thousand and fifty-seven years, sir, we have waited for the call. If today is the day we fight and die for the benefit of the Third Expansion of Mankind—if the purpose of this station is to be fulfilled on my watch—then I, Boote the Forty-Third, will be proud to take my place in history.” He struck his sunken chest with his fist.
“Thank you, Captain,” Kimmer said dryly. “I know you will do your duty.”
The two parties faced each other, motionless. As the delay lengthened, Pirius grew puzzled.
Pila leaned toward him so their helmets touched. “Go to the backup command loop.”
Pirius tapped his chest control panel, and he heard massed voices. “… Named for a victory / Over Ghosts, a vanquished enemy Our Rock, as firm as our resolve Is dedicated to our duty …” Now he saw the faces of the ranks of troops, their moving mouths. They were singing, he realized, all thousand of them, singing a song of welcome to their visitors. They even sang harmonies.
“The lyrics are none too tactful in the circumstances,” Pila murmured through his helmet.
Pirius glanced surreptitiously at the Ghost, but it showed no reaction to this song of triumph about its kind’s most terrible defeat.
The song went on and on. By now Nilis had coached Pirius in the need to be diplomatic, but by the fourth verse he had had enough. He switched to the squadron loop and ordered his crews to fall out. Then he confronted Captain Boote the Forty-Third. “Sir. Thanks for the song. Where’s the refectory?”
Kimmer glowered; Nilis looked mortified. Pila laughed.
Once he’d got his skinsuit stripped off, Pirius went straight to work.
In theory, so he’d been told, the base was fully equipped with all they needed to operate the squadron. He told Pila his target for resuming training flights was twenty-four hours. Again she laughed.
Captain Boote led Pirius and Nilis through the guts of the complex that had been dug into Orion Rock.
Boote wore a robe that trailed to the floor in languid, elegant drapes. His face and scalp had been shaved of every scrap of hair, even eyebrows and nostril hair.
If Boote was magnificent, so was the base he commanded. But like him, it was odd, too. In its layout it was essentially the same as every other Rock Pirius had visited, with the usual barracks, refectories, dispensaries, science labs, training facilities from classrooms to sim chambers, and technical facilities from environment systems to huge subsurface hangars.
But every other Rock had an air of shabbiness; a Rock always looked lived-in, because it was, by a bunch of squabbling, randy trainees and troopers who cared a lot more about sack time than about hygiene and neatness—and because, by Coalition policy, every military facility was cut to the bone in resources anyhow. A base was a place you left to go fight, not a place you longed to get back to.
Orion was different. Pirius had never seen a base so neat. In the barracks there wasn’t a blanket out of place. When they passed, all the troops sprang to attention and lined up neatly by their bunks, eerie grins plastered over their faces. Even the walls were smooth to the touch—worn at shoulder height by the passage of millions of young bodies.
Neat it might have been, but everywhere was dark, lit by only a few hovering globes. Pirius thought the air was a little cold, though it tasted fresh enough. Not only that, everybody—even the youngest children in the junior cadres—crept about quietly, treading softly and murmuring. Boote said it was always like this.
“Ah,” Nilis said. “Silent running.”
“What’s that?” They were both whispering; it was contagious.
“This is a covert base, remember. The crew are sailing toward the Xeelee, who must not suspect they are here. And they strive to keep everything below the level of the background noise of the Baby Spiral—their energy expenditure, their signaling. As for the whispering and creeping about, I don’t imagine it makes much practical difference, but, though I’m no expert on motivation, I should think it is good psychology—a constant reminder to keep your head down.”
Pirius peered around curiously at the wide-eyed children who smiled hopefully at him. He tried to imagine how it must be to have grown up in this claustrophobic environment of darken
ed corridors and whispers. But these kids had never known anything different; to them this was normal.
As they walked on, Boote proudly explained the origin of his name.
Of course there were no true families here, no heredity; that would be far too non-Doctrinal. This was a place of birthing tanks and cadres, like most military bases. But a tradition had grown up even so. The first Boote, centuries back, had been a fine Captain who had inspired loyalty and affection from all. When her successor had taken her name on his accession, to become Boote the Second, it had seemed the most natural thing in the world, a tribute that had become a badge of honor to the Captains who had followed, right down to this fine fellow, Boote the Forty-Third. Similarly there were “dynasties” among the engineers and medics, comm officers and pilots, and other specialist corps.
Nilis raised his eyebrows at Pirius, but said nothing. Wherever you went, a little deviance was inevitable, it seemed.
They were taken out onto the surface in a covered walkway. Nilis cringed from the crowded sky, but after that gloomy enclosure Pirius was relieved to be out under the healthy glow of the Core.
They surveyed earthworks dug into the ground. Teams of troopers in skinsuits were working in the trenches. They weren’t digging so much as refurbishing, Pirius saw. He had never seen earthworks so regular and neat—their walls were precisely vertical, their edges geometrically straight and dead neat. And he couldn’t see a trace of stray dust anywhere. The troops smiled as they worked, in precise formation.
In one part of the works the troops suddenly lunged out of their trenches and flopped onto the surface, across which they began to wriggle.
“They’re maneuvering,” said Pirius. “But it’s not an exercise. It’s more like a game.”
“Yes,” said Nilis. “And these earthworks are an ornamental garden. These folk have been isolated too long, Pirius. A trench is a place to fight and die. They have domesticated these trenches.”
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