Galactic Empires

by Gardner R. Dozois

  I shook my head. "It's no good, Muhunnad. It's all over."

  "No, it is not. The River Volga is not dead. I only made it seem this way."

  I frowned. "I don't understand."

  "There isn't time to explain here. Get me back to the bridge, get me connected back to the harness, then I will tell you. But make haste! We really do not have very much time. The enemy are much nearer than you think."

  "The enemy?"

  "There is no Mandate of Heaven. Either she scuttled back to the portal, or she was destroyed during the same attack that damaged us."

  "But you said…"

  "I lied. Now help me move!"

  Not for the first time that day, I did precisely as I was told.

  Having already plotted a route around the obstructions, it did not take anywhere near as long to return to the bridge as it had taken to reach the lifeboats. Once there, I buckled him into the couch—he was beginning to retain some limb control, but not enough to help me with the task—and set about reconnecting the harness systems, trusting myself not to make a mistake. My fingers fumbled on the ends of my hands, as if they were a thousand li away.

  "Start talking to me, Muhunnad," I said. "Tell me what's going on. Why did you lie about the Mandate!"

  "Because I knew the effect that lie would have on Qilian. I wished to give him a reason to leave the ship. I had seen the kind of man he was. I knew that he would save himself, even if it meant the rest of us dying."

  "I still don't understand. What good has it done us? The damage to the ship…" I completed the final connection. Muhunnad stiffened as the harness took hold of his nervous system, but did not appear to be in any obvious discomfort. "Are you all right?" I asked warily.

  "This will take a moment. I had to put the ship into a deep shutdown, to convince Qilian. I must bring her back system by system, so as not to risk an overload."

  The evidence of his work was already apparent. The bridge lights returned to normal illumination, while those readouts and displays that had remained active were joined by others that had fallen into darkness. I held my breath, expecting the whole ensemble to shut back down again at any moment. But I should have known better than to doubt Muhunnad's ability. The systems remained stable, even as they cycled through startup and crash recovery routines. The air circulators resumed their dull but reassuring chug.

  "I shall dispense with artificial gravity until we are safely under way, if that is satisfactory with you."

  "Whatever it takes," I said.

  His eyes, still wide open, quivered in their sockets. "I am sweeping local space," he reported. "There was some real damage to the sensors, but nowhere as bad as I made out. I can see Qilian's lifeboat. He made an excellent departure." Then he swallowed. "I can also see the enemy. Three of their ships will shortly be within attack range. I must risk restarting the engines without a proper initialization test."

  "Again, whatever it takes."

  "Perhaps you would like to brace yourself. There may be a degree of undamped acceleration."

  Muhunnad had been right to warn me, and even then it came harder and sooner than I had been expecting. Although I had managed to secure myself to a handhold, I was nearly wrenched away with the abruptness of our departure. I felt acceleration rising smoothly, until it was suppressed by the dampeners. My arm was sore from the jolt, as if it had been almost pulled from its socket.

  "That is all I can do for us now," Muhunnad said. "Running is our only effective strategy, unfortunately. Our weapons would prove totally ineffective against the enemy, even if we could get close enough to fire before they turned their own guns on us. But running will suffice. At least we have the mass of one less lifeboat to consider."

  "I still don't quite get what happened. How did you know there'd still be one lifeboat that was still working? From what I saw, we came very close to losing all of them."

  "We did," he said, with something like pride in his voice. "But not quite, you see. That was my doing, Ariunaa. Before the instant of the attack, I adjusted the angle of orientation of our hull. I made sure that the energy beam took out five of the six lifeboat launch hatches, and no more. Think of a knife fighter, twisting to allow part of his body to be cut rather than another."

  I stared at him in amazement, forgetting the pain in my arm from the sudden onset of acceleration. I recalled what Qilian had said, his puzzlement about the ship twisting at the onset of the attack. "You mean you had all this planned, before they even attacked us?"

  "I evaluated strategies for disposing of our mutual friend, while retaining the ship. This seemed the one most likely to succeed."

  "I am… impressed."

  "Thank you," he said. "Of course, it would have been easier if I had remained in the harness, so that we could move immediately once the pod had departed. But I think Qilian would have grown suspicious if I had not shown every intention of wanting to escape with him."

  "You're right. It was the only way to convince him."

  "And now there is only one more matter that needs to be brought to your attention. It is still possible to speak to him. It can be arranged with trivial ease: despite what I said earlier, I am perfectly capable of locking on a tight beam."

  "He'll have no idea what's happened, will he? He'll still think he's got away with it. He's expecting to be rescued by the Mandate of Heaven at any moment."

  "Eventually, the nature of his predicament will become apparent. But by then, he is likely to have come to the attention of the Smiling Ones."

  I thought of the few things Muhunnad had told us about our adversaries. "What will they do to him? Shoot him out of the sky?"

  "Not if they sense a chance to take him captive with minimal losses on their own side. I would suggest that an unpowered lifeboat would present exactly such an opportunity."

  "And then?"

  "He will die. But not immediately. Like the Shining Caliphate and the Mongol Expansion, the Smiling Ones have an insatiable appetite for information. They will have found others of his kind before, just as they have found others of mine. But I am sure Qilian will still provide them with much amusement."

  "And then?" I repeated.

  "An appetite of another kind will come into play. The Smiling Ones are cold-blooded creatures. Reptiles. They consider the likes of us-the warm, the mammalian-to be a kind of affront. As well they might, I suppose. All those millions of years ago, we ate their eggs."

  I absorbed what he said, thinking of Qilian falling to his destiny, unaware for now of the grave mistake he had made. Part of me was inclined to show clemency: not by rescuing him, which would place us dangerously close to the enemy, but by firing on him, so that he might be spared an encounter with the Smiling Ones.

  But it was not a large part.

  "Time to portal, Muhunnad?"

  "Six minutes, on our present heading. Do you wish to review my intentions?"

  "No," I said, after a moment. "I trust you to do the best possible job. You think we'll make it into the Infrastructure without falling to pieces?"

  "If Allah is willing. But you understand that our chances of returning to home are now very slim, Yellow Dog? Despite my subterfuge, this ship is damaged. It will not survive many more transitions."

  "Then we'll just have to make the best of wherever we end up," I said.

  "It will not feel like home to either of us," he replied, his tone gently warning, as if I needed reminding of that.

  "But if there are people out there… I mean, instead of egg-laying monsters, or sweet-looking devils with tails, then it'll be better than nothing, won't it? People are people. If the Infrastructure is truly breaking down, allowing all these timelines to bleed into one another, than we are all going to have get along with each other sooner or later, no matter what we all did to each other in our various histories. We're all going to have to put the past behind us."

  "It will not be easy," he acknowledged. "But if two people as unalike as you and I can become friends, then perhaps there is ho
pe. Perhaps we could even become an example to others. We shall have to see, shan't we?"

  "We shall have to see," I echoed.

  I held Muhunnad's hand as we raced toward the portal, and whatever Heaven had in store for us on the other side.

  * * *

  THE SEER AND THE SILVERMAN

  Stephen Baxter

  Taken from the Short Story Collection “Galactic Empires” (2008) edited by Gardner Dozois

  * * *

  Like many of his colleagues here at the beginning of a new century, British writer Stephen Baxter has been engaged for more than a decade now with the task of revitalizing and reinventing the "hard-science" story for a new generation of readers, producing work on the cutting edge of science that bristles with weird new ideas and often takes place against vistas of almost outrageously cosmic scope.

  Baxter made his first sale to Interzone in 1987, and since then he has become one of that magazine's most frequent contributors, as well as making sales to Asimov's Science Fiction, Science Fiction Age, Analog, Zenith, New Worlds, and elsewhere. He's one of the most prolific new writers in science fiction, and is rapidly becoming one of the most popular and acclaimed of them as well. In 2001, he appeared on the Final Hugo Ballot twice, and won both Asimov's Readers Award and Analog'5 Analytical Laboratory Award, one of the few writers ever to win both awards in the same year. Baxter's first novel, Raft, was released in 1991 to wide and enthusiastic response, and was rapidly followed by other well-received novels such as Timelike Infinity, Anti-Ice, Flux, and the H. G. Wells pastiche—a sequel to The Time Machine-The Time Ships, which won both the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and the Philip K. Dick Award. His other books include the novels, Voyage, Titan, Moonseed, Mammoth, Book One: Silverhair, Manifold: Time, Manifold: Space, Evolution, Coalescent, Exultant, Transcendent, Emperor, Resplendent, and two novels in collaboration with Arthur C. Clarke, The Light of Other Days and Time's Eye, a Time Odyssey. His short fiction has been collected in Vacuum Diagrams: Stories of the Xeelee Sequence, Traces, and Hunters of Pangaea, and he has released a chapbook novella, Mayflower II. Coming up are a flood of new novels, including Conqueror, Navagator, Firstborn, Weaver, Flood, and The H-bomb Girl.

  Baxters Xeelee series is one of the most complex sequences in science fiction history, a tapestry of dozens of stories and many novels (Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring, Cilia-of-Gold) that spans millions of years of time as well as most of the galaxy, and brings humans into contact (usually hostile contact) with dozens of alien races, many of them initially more powerful and advanced than humanity itself. Here, in a scenario roughly halfway through the entire arc of the sequence, he pictures the attempt of two Galactic Empires formerly locked in conflict to uneasily coexist-with the stakes about as high as they can possibly get.

  * * *

  His mother's screaming filled the lifedome. "He's gone. The Ghosts have taken him. Lethe, Benj is gone!"

  Shocked awake, Donn Wyman grabbed a robe and ran out of his cabin.

  His mother and father were in the plaza, in their sleep clothes, clinging to each other. They were outside Benj's cabin. The door was open. Donn could see at a glance that the room was empty.

  Only seconds after wakening, he had a sickening, immediate sense of what was wrong. The abduction from out of the heart of his home was bewildering, as if part of reality had been cut away, not just a human being, not just his brother.

  "Now, Rima, don't take on." Samm Wyman was trying to calm his wife. He was a careworn man, slight of build and with his family's pale blue eyes. Donn knew that spreading calm was his father's fundamental strategy in life.

  But Rima was struggling in his arms. "He's gone! You can see for yourself!" Her hair was wild, her face tattoos unanimated, just dead black scars on her cheeks.

  "Yes, but you're jumping to conclusions, you always think the worst straightaway."

  She pushed him away. "Oh, get off me, you fool. What else could it be but an abduction? If he'd gone out through the ports, the lifedome AI would know about it. So what good is being calm? Do you think you can just wish this away?"

  Donn said uncertainly, "Mother—"

  "Oh, Donn-help me look. Just in case he's somewhere in the dome, somewhere the AI hasn't spotted him."

  Donn knew that was futile, but they had to look. "All right."

  Rima snapped at her husband. "And you find out if he's anywhere else on the Reef. And call the Commissary. If the Coalition are going to meddle in our affairs, they may as well make themselves useful. They could start by finding out where every Ghost on the Reef was last night-and the Silvermen."

  She stalked off and began throwing open doors around the rim of the plaza. The bots followed her, their aged servos whirring.

  Samm eyed his elder son. "I already called Commissary Elah. Who knows? Maybe the Coalition goons will be some use for once. She's just taking out her anger on me. She'll take it out on you, too, before she's done. It's her way. Don't let it upset you."

  "I won't, Dad. But this is bad, isn't it?"

  "I'm afraid so, son. Go on, get searching."

  Donn cut across the center of the plaza, the lifedome's central floor space. Much of it was given over to green, for the crew of this old ship, his mother's distant ancestors, had crossed the stars with a chunk of forest brought from Earth itself, a copse of mature trees, oak, alder, and lime, old enough to have wrapped thick roots around the struts of the lifedome's frame. But Donn, twenty-five years old, had never been to Earth, and to him the trees were just furniture.

  Of course, there was no sign of Benj. Why would he have hidden away among the trees? Benj, at twenty-one, liked his comforts. And even if he was here, the AI's surveillance systems would have known about it.

  Something whirred past Donn's face, tiny, metallic. It was a robot insect. And a fine spray of water descended on him. He lifted his face and saw droplets condensing out of the air, an artificial rain born in the summit of the lifedome and falling all around him. Above the rain, the transparent dome showed a star field that had barely changed for centuries: the Association, a cluster of stars dominated by the Boss, a single monstrous star a million times as bright as Earth's sun, an unforgiving point of light. He was getting slowly wet, but he didn't mind; he found the sensation oddly comforting on this difficult morning.

  "Beautiful, isn't it? The star field."

  The smooth voice made him start. He turned.

  Commissary Elah stood beside him. Her eyes were large and dark, her gaze fixed on his face, calculating, judgmental. Taller than Donn, she was dressed in a Commissary's floor-length black robe, a costume so drab it seemed to suck all the light out of the air. Her scalp was shaved, a starkness that emphasized the beauty of her well-defined chin and cheekbones, and her skin gleamed with droplets of the artificial rain. Donn had no idea how old she was.

  "I didn't mean to startle you," she said.

  Something about her made Donn pull his robe tighter around his body. "Commissary. It's good of you to have come out so quickly. My parents will be reassured-"

  "I hope so. I've brought some specialist help. A woman called Eve Raoul—a Virtual, actually, but quite expert. This is what we're here for, the Commission for Historical Truth. To help." Her accent sounded odd to a Reefborn, slightly strangulated at the back of the throat—an accent from Earth. "The Coalition understands."

  "I suppose it must," Donn said. "If it seeks to rule."

  "Not to rule," said Elah gently. "To join all of scattered mankind behind a common purpose. And by helping you sort out issues like this with the Ghosts—"

  "Nobody knows for sure if the Ghosts are behind these abductions."

  She eyed him. "But the Ghosts aren't denying it. Are you loyal to the Ghosts or your family, Donn Wyman?"

  "I-" He didn't know what to say to that direct question; he didn't think in such terms. "Why must I choose?"

  She reached out with a pale hand and stroked the trunk of an oak tree. "Remarkable, these plants. So strange. So st
rong!"

  "They are trees. Don't you have any on Earth anymore?"

  She shrugged. "Probably. In laboratories. Earth has other purposes now than to grow trees." She glanced around. "You know, I've visited the Miriam Berg several times. But I've never stood in this very spot, beneath these trees. Trade, your profession, isn't it?"

  "I'm an interspecies factor, specializing in relations with the Ghost enclaves."

  "It's all so deliriously archaic. And anti-Doctrinal, of course, your way of life, your ship's existence, its very name, all relics of a forbidden past!" She laughed. "But don't worry, we've no intention of turning you out summarily. All things in time." She pushed at the earth, the grass, with a bare foot. "We're on the ship's axis here, yes? Over the spine. Your mother's family came to the Reef in mis ship, didn't they, a thousand years ago? I imagine there are access hatches. Is it possible to reach the drive pod from here?"

  "That's nothing to do with you." Samm came bustling up. Beside Elah's cool composure, his father looked a crumpled mess, Donn thought, his hair sticking up like the grass under their feet, his face shining with the sweat of sleep.

  "I apologize," Elah said easily. "You did invite me here."

  With his arms outstretched, Samm escorted her away from the copse. "To help with looking for Benj. Not to go snooping around the Miriam.'" But as she walked with him, he backed down, nervous of offending the new agency from Earth that had taken over all their lives. "We're all distressed."

  "I understand."

  Donn lingered for another few seconds under the artificial rain. He wondered why his father should care about the Commissary, or any Coalition agent, snooping around this thousand-year-old heap of junk. Maybe he had trade goods tucked down there in the spine-given the Coalition's new tax codes, Donn thought that was quite likely-but if so, he couldn't have signaled it any more clearly. Not subtle, Donn's father, whatever other qualities he might have.

  But as Donn stood there, the complexities of Reef politics faded, and the reality of his brother's loss crowded back into his head, the true story of the day. For months, the abductions had been an arbitrary plague. Nobody could rest, for at any moment, you could be taken, too, from the most secure place. What a horror it was. And now it had come here, to his own family. He wondered, in fact, how it was he felt so calm himself. Shock, perhaps.