by Far Freedom
Zakiya grabbed Jamie by the arm and squeezed hard, startling her. She pulled her away from the others, over to a clear area of the control room. She called for a transmat and winked them to another place in the asteroid.
“What are you waiting for?” Demba asked Aylis Mnro and Sugai Mai, who stood on either side of a sarcophagus similar to the one that had held Phuti Mende on the Five Worlds.
“Waiting for the princess,” Mnro said, “so she can kiss the prince and wake
320 Far Freedom him.”
Jamie touched the case with a trembling hand. A small image display on its top showed a sleeping face. A light red beard covered the cheeks and surrounded his slightly opened mouth. Blond hair floated in the clear liquid in a halo around his head. He looked so innocent, so young, so beautiful. Her heart was racing, until an augment reined it in. Was this the cold-eyed Navy captain who could murder four men to avenge her rape? Was it the blind old man who said he loved her? He was too young and perfect. She was too old and damaged.
“He looks youthful,” Sugai Mai commented, then she gasped as she looked past Mnro. A stranger stood in the doorway looking down at the floor, starting to turn away.
” Son,” Mnro said, taking a step toward him. It caused the man to pause.
Jamie took a longer look, not because she didn’t recognize the old man, but because he made her auxiliary memory erupt with some of her fonder images of Direk at the end of their life together. He had used his body long and hard, was scarred and scabbed, his hands thickened and gnarled, his hair turned white and thin. She loved the way he looked.
“I’m not your son,” he said. “You know that.”
Mnro took another step toward him but Sugai Mai rushed around the sarcophagus to hold her.
“Please, don’t approach me,” the old Direk said. “I thought I needed to wait. I was lonely. It was a mistake. I’m terribly sorry.” He started to move away.
Mnro pulled free of Sugai Mai and rushed to him. She wrapped her arms around him. “You are my son! Don’t leave us!”
“I became selfish.” He did not complete the embrace. “I was living in borrowed memories. I dreamed of this moment, when I would see real people again. When I would see you. When I would see her.” Jamie knew he referred to herself. She moved toward him. “Never did I imagine how my heart would break.”
His words shocked Jamie. It was a shock of warmth that made her feel strangely apprehensive. Direk would never… but he did… say such things. But only when he was so old and worn out?
“Don’t let it break!” Mnro demanded, hitting him even as she hugged him. “See me! See her! Stay with us! Live! You are a real person, not just a convenient replacement for a weak human!” He turned his head a little and saw the face of his mother pressed tightly against his shoulder. He touched her face. She looked up at him and smiled at what she saw. “Jamie is here! Look at her!”
His face rose farther and his eyes found Jamie. A century of time melted away and Jamie was an old woman feeling loved and secure in partnership with a kind old man. Perhaps she did know who Direk was in at least one important way. Son and mother paused to see what Jamie would do. She came to him, placed a hand on the back of his neck, and pulled his mouth against hers.
“I feel better now,” the old Direk said, when both women released him. He walked over to the sarcophagus and activated controls. The fluid began draining away from his original. He placed a web of circuitry onto his scalp. At this point Aylis became agitated, causing Jamie to worry as well. The full meaning of the action escaped her. In only a few moments Direk’s copy finished the process and removed the circuitry. “There wasn’t much worth giving him,” he said, “but I gave him me.” He smiled at Zakiya until his eyes closed. He turned around, opened his eyes, saw Sugai Mai. “I’m pleased to meet you,” he said to her. “What is your name?”
” Sugai Mai.”
“I need your help. Could you step over there with me?”
Jamie knew something was wrong but couldn’t move. When she did move, her mother grabbed her by the waist. Demba had already blocked Mnro from the same path.
“Thank you, Zakiya” the old man said. “There can only be one. There is no sadness now.” The copy of Direk teleported away with Mai.
Direk began to awaken. They needed to retrieve him and clothe him. Jamie couldn’t stay. She was about to scream. They let the best Direk die. The only one who never abandoned her, and now he had done the same.
Section 019 Ship in a Bottle
“How can it scale this large?” Iggy asked. “It would seem that the chance for a field defect would increase exponentially with the radius of the sphere.”
How happy I am to hear your voice, Uncle Iggy! he thought. He felt no urge to supply the exact mathematical relationship he and his copy formulated from experimental data. He was still remembering the kiss Jamie gave his copy, who was now inside him, making himself at home, grinning from ear to ear. “It was tested during the Rhyan War,” Direk replied, enjoying Iggy’s excitement.
“Three destroyer-class ships, each barely a tenth the size of the Freedom!”
“The emitters can be enabled in approximate simultaneity, with no envelope produced until an agreement is reached to merge.”
“An agreement?”
“For lack of a better description and for lack of any kind of theory.” Direk smiled at Uncle Iggy. “As long as the enabling signals are not too loosely grouped, the emitters will find an instant in which to merge fields. This is not to say the signaling is easy. We have signal paths measured in kilometers and signal variation restricted to femtoseconds. We attack the window of simultaneity with a series of about ten million pulse array packets, each slightly different in timing.”
“I’m sorry.” Iggy apparently overlooked Direk’s smile. “You must be correct. If you aren’t, we’ll all be stuck in this asteroid until the Navy finds us.”
“Your concern is justified. This is the very same apparatus Pan and I built for Commodore Keshona. It’s inverted in function. The three destroyers were not modified to become jumpships. They were teleported from here when it was configured as a gate. We couldn’t have them arriving at Rhyandh with their weapons ports covered by technology we didn’t want revealed.”
“I can’t imagine how you solved the problem of structural precision in a construct as dynamic as a starship. It plagues starlight drive geometry and jumpships must need more than a magnitude better precision.”
“You’re correct, Uncle Iggy.” Again Direk wondered. Iggy ignored his “Uncle Iggy” form of addressing him, as though accustomed to such familiarity. “Pan and I simply applied the rigidity protocols statically and dynamically to every physical member that could be individually addressed.”
“Then you must have full-time active geometry stabilization. Was that a smile you gave me? I’ve spent a lifetime with your other duplicate. He never smiled. He always treated me the way physicists treat engineers. I grew to hate him, probably because he would allow no other possibility. Then he became my hero and died before I could tell him of my change of opinion.”
“My other copy was a hero?” Direk was only vaguely aware he had a second copy. He was presently absorbed in the few but happy memories he had of Igor Khalanov from the earliest days of his life. As a child he always looked forward to visits from Uncle Iggy. He realized Iggy loved children and wanted to have one of his own. He spent a lot of his time with Direk for the pure joy he could give and receive. It surprised Direk to realize his father - Setek-Ren - tolerated Iggy’s monopoly of his son’s attention with no complaint. It was possible to assign unflattering motives for his father but Direk chose to ignore that exercise.
“They rushed you up here without telling you about me and your other copy,” Iggy said. “We built the Freedom in a war of wills, you and I. I never knew I was your ‘Uncle Iggy.’”
“I’m ignorant of what happened with that copy of me. I know he had the most difficult task. He had to find ways to b
ring us all together at the moment our mission would begin. I wonder how he managed to maneuver Jamie onto the Freedom.” Jamie. Something was wrong. Zakiya and his mother wouldn’t talk about her. He was using great restraint in not questioning Iggy about her. Why did she leave before he was retrieved from the sarcophagus? He should be content merely that she was here. It was a miracle they got this far with a plan that was more than two centuries old.
Iggy stood up when he saw who entered the control room. He was short, brown, and Chinese in appearance. Direk knew who the man resembled and if it was Doctor Mende he assumed he was not as dead as people thought. He was a very live Sherpa.
“Igor Khalanov!” The man’s voice was full of happiness. “I was told you don’t remember me. My name is Phuti.”
“I know who you are! I wish I did remember you!” Iggy offered his hand to Phuti Mende who took it and used it to pull them together where he could hug Iggy and pound him on the back.
“Iggy, we’ll have fun remembering each other!” Phuti released Iggy and turned to Direk. He accepted Phuti’s handshake and embrace. He wondered why the man suddenly ceased, as though Direk became too hot to handle. “I forget myself! I apologize for such behavior toward you. The years evaporate before the joy of memories too brightly recorded. I once held you on my lap when you were a small child.”
Direk smiled slightly and bowed deeply. He, too, forgot himself, and was sad that such Essiin restraint was expected of him. He couldn’t easily explain to Phuti how he felt, and so he said nothing.
Phuti looked at each of them with an intense fondness, until he had to turn away. He studied the image of the ship enclosed in the cavern of the asteroid. “What do I see? What kind of modification?”
Direk and Iggy joined Phuti at the display wall that appeared to be a window on the cavern. Iggy deferred to Direk to provide an explanation. “The Freedom is the convex floor you see with the pylons arranged across its surface. That’s the upper hemisphere of the ship. The lower half is similar. The structure you see above the ship, and its twin below the ship, will be connected to the ship. This is what it will look like.” Direk caused the wall display to show a diagram of the entire mechanisms that would attach to the ship.
“So the ship,” Phuti said, “changes from a spiky oblate spheroid to a perfect sphere when the upper and lower mechanisms are attached to it. A lot of mass and machinery. To what purpose?”
“Teleportation,” Iggy said with relish.
“Uncle Iggy seems to prefer terminology that has more of a flavor of magic than of science.”
“And is teleportation what this does?”
“The effect,” Iggy replied enthusiastically, “is to move the ship across a large distance in an instant. The added components create what might be termed a drive envelope with total closure.”
“But you can’t achieve total closure, can you? And if you did get closure you wouldn’t go anywhere. There would be no point of attachment to the interstellar quantum pathways, no heading notch. Nor would you be able to sustain the closure.”
“An expression of symmetry is apparently required by the universe,” Direk said, when Iggy was at a loss for words. “There is never just one closed envelope created. There is an echo effect, in a controllable direction and distance, where a second envelope will appear. Whatever is contained within the envelope will be moved to the echo envelope at the instant of closure. You’re right: you can’t sustain closure. It isn’t necessary or even desirable.”
” So you jump from one envelope to the other. How far can you jump?”
“The distance is limited only by navigational hazards.”
“Give me an example. You’ve got me excited.”
“We should be able to travel to any nearby galaxy in a single jump.”
“I think I’ll agree with Iggy and call it teleportation,” Phuti said. “It seems magical to me. Did the Old Ones teach you how to build all of this?”
“No, they imparted no knowledge to us. They helped by supplying the animating force to bring two copies of myself to life. Each of them was superior to me but true to my own characteristics.”
“Who are these ‘Old Ones?’” Iggy asked.
“They were discovered by the Frontier long ago,” Direk replied. “They requested that they and some of their technology not be revealed to the rest of civilization.”
“They’re a precursor race? I thought they all translated to some higher plane of existence, or otherwise became extinct.”
“I don’t know why they remain, or how many there are.”
“The cryptikons are theirs?”
“Perhaps. They tell us very little. For some reason they remained near my mother, where she could call upon them for their services. They were willing to animate our copies, but as far as I know, they don’t modify or manipulate the personality of the copy. I suspect they’ve lost the ability to die, and dying as a copy of one of us is at least an approximation of death. They’re not even aware of their own existence until the very end of the life of the copy. I believe you were the first to discover the Old Ones, Iggy.”
“That’s true,” Phuti said. “Nobody believed you at first, Iggy. One usually doesn’t uncover a live pharaoh in a pyramid. The Old Ones may have been cleaning up the dangerous technology that was left behind by them and by others. They must have followed us for awhile, and became interested in us.”
“You developed this technology on your own?” Iggy asked Direk.
“Many years ago I viewed a recording made by Zakiya showing the Titanic being overwhelmed by what we’ve termed barbarian jumpships. From that, I saw what was possible. I had help from Pan. He was a capable engineer.”
“Gates and Gatekeepers,” Phuti said. “Nobody has had time to tell me about the great adventure Zakiya and Sammy and - is it Freddy? - had with transmats and gates.”
“Nor me,” Direk said.
“I’ve kept you away from your important work too long,” Phuti Mende said. “I need to keep moving so Doctor Sugai won’t catch me. She thinks I need to be relaxing under her microscope. I was really aged when Aylis put me in my coffin, and it was an unmonitored rejuvenation. I’m going to help bring the Malay privateers aboard the Freedom. The Navy is converging on this volume of space and their drive won’t be repaired in time.”
“Have you seen Jamie?” Direk asked.
“I haven’t,” Phuti replied. “Ah.” He paused for several seconds. “A pleasant memory of you and her visiting the Five Worlds. I apologize again! Not so
pleasant for you!”
“I remember it fondly.” Phuti looked at him with new interest and Direk was content to let him wonder. When Direk would add nothing to his statement, Phuti gave Iggy a last smile and removed himself from the control room.
Direk returned to work. Iggy sat down and stared at nothing. “Is something wrong?” Direk inquired.
“I’m impatient to remember! I’m supposed to be a friend of such famous people as Phuti and Aylis and I feel undeserving.”
“It isn’t bad to feel the way you do.” Direk felt much the same. His father, Setek-Ren had been the principle scientist responsible for making transmats work. His mother was, of course, the “Mother of Immortality.” His godfather was none other than the legendary Alexandros Gerakis. And Phuti Mende was … And Zakiya was… Yes, Direk was very much a kindred spirit to Iggy. “It will pass and give contrast to better feelings, Uncle. I’m also a stranger to myself. I live in the shadow of my duplicates. I content myself with remembering Ruby. And also you.”
“What do you mean by that?”
” You were very much my Uncle Iggy when I was a small child. And there were other times when I was happy as an adult.”
“Tell me about them!”
Direk wanted to tell Iggy. From the sound of his voice, he knew Iggy wanted to know what made him happy. “You wouldn’t believe it.”
“Believe what? Is there any work being done here?”
Iggy stood up again.
Jamie saluted the admiral. Direk started to salute Jamie but he stopped, unsure of his crew status. Technically he was not a Navy officer. He was puzzled to see the Navy captain’s rank on Jamie’s uniform. His copy identified her as a Marine major. She looked at him and looked away, her expression guarded.
“To what do we owe the pleasure of this visit?” Iggy asked.
“Phuti Mende,” Jamie said. “We didn’t want him coming here and disturbing you. You seem unaffected, Admiral. We thought Doctor Mende might trigger the release of your auxiliary memory. That would pose a risk to the engineering effort.”
“I understand now. I don’t feel any memories are ready to surface. Is it your sole duty to find Phuti Mende?”
“Admiral’s orders. It seems Doctor Mnro neglected to install a shiplink in him. I can’t track him. I’m unsure how he’s accessing the transmat facilities. Do you know which way he went?”
“No, we don’t,” Iggy replied.
Jamie saluted and departed by transmat.
“Why did you lie to her?” Direk inquired.
“Admirals lie. I’m an admiral. She wasn’t very friendly to you, Direk.”
” She liked my copy well enough.”
“It must have been strange, working with yourself all those years. Or was it like having a twin brother?”
“A little of both. We only worked together when there were tasks requiring two of us, then we would take turns working alone, often for years. Finally, I went into the box to renew my body and Harry finished the last decade by himself.”
“Harry? You called your copy Harry?”
“Do you know who Pan is?” Direk asked.
“Pan? The name is vaguely familiar, if only from mythology.”
“Pan is my half brother. My mother says we left him on Earth and that he has become a famous musician.”
“The Opera Master of Earth! That Pan!”
“Before the war we spent many years together doing research. It wasn’t as entertaining for Pan as it was for me. Pan needed to relax from the ordeal at times. He eventually became a musician named Harry. I joined him for a time and called myself Dick. After the war, when my copy joined me in place of Pan, I called him Harry. My copy never could play the piano as well as Pan.”