Galactic Empires

by Gardner R. Dozois

Donn expected his father to boot up these control slates. He didn't. Instead he took the small portable slate he had carried down from the lifedome and pressed it against a wall. It lit up with a crowded panel of displays. "There you go," Samm said. "Two hundred years old, and it fires up like it was brand-new."

  "What does?"

  "This." He tapped the slate and showed Donn an external view of the Miriam, seen from below, its lifedome embedded in the rough plane of the Reef, its spine and engine compartment dangling like a lantern. Samm zoomed in on the hull of the engine compartment, where a black slab clung like a parasite.

  Donn leaned forward and stared. "What is that?"

  "The family secret." Samm eyed his son. "Look, Donn-you aren't the first Wyman to have run into the Sink Ambassador. Your grandfather a few times removed—his name was Joens Wyman—got involved in a kind of intergalactic race with the Ghosts. He was an entrepreneur. And he wanted to get his hands on-"

  "A cache of quagma," Donn said. "You told me about this."

  "The trouble was, the cache was somewhere over twelve billion light-years away-the figures are uncertain. Too far even for hyperdrive. But Joens Wyman didn't use hyperdrive. He used an experimental human technology. It was called a Susy drive."

  "Susy? That's the fritter's name."

  "The flitter, and a secret space drive. It was kind of risky. It's not like hyperdrive. Look, they taught you at school that the universe has more dimensions than the macroscopic, the three spatial, and one of time. Most of the extra dimensions are extremely small. When you hyperdrive, you sort of twist smoothly through ninety degrees into an extra dimension, and go skimming over the surface of the universe like a pebble over a pond. Simple. Whereas with supersymmetry, you're getting into the real guts of physics."

  There were two types of particles: fermions, the building blocks of matter, like quarks and electrons, and force carriers, like photons. The principle of supersymmetry had it that each building block could be translated into a force carrier, and vice versa. "The supersymmetric twins, the s-particles, are inherently fascinating, if you're a physicist, which I'm not," said Samm. "But the magic comes when you do two supersymmetric transformations-say, electron to selectron and back again. You end up with an electron, of course—but an electron in a different place."

  "And that's the Susy drive."

  "Yep. A principle the Ghosts have never explored. Joens Wyman pumped his money into this thing, and got as far as a working prototype. But in those days, nobody would invest in human research and development; it was always easier and cheaper to buy alien tech off the shelf. Joens hoped to cut his losses by sending his Susy-drive ship in search of treasure nobody else could get to."

  "The quagma. What happened?"

  "Joens finished up with nothing but the Susy drive and the clothes he stood up in. He fled his creditors."

  "He came here."

  "Yes. Good place to hide, beyond Coalition law—anyhow, it was then. His son married into your mother's family, who owned the Miriam.'"

  "And he lodged the Susy drive on the hull of the ship."

  "Yeah. So it's come down the generations. My father told me about it and gave me the data on this slate. I think Joens always thought this old monster might be useful as a last resort. Well, he was right."

  Donn stared at his father. This was a side of him Donn hadn't seen before, this decisive adventurer. But maybe no son saw that in his father. "Dad, you're not serious. You're not planning to fire up this Susy drive, this two-hundred-year-old disaster."

  "You have a better idea?"

  "When was it last tested?"

  "When do you think? Look, according to these displays, the field it generates will envelop the whole of the Reef. We'll get out of here, all of us. And then you and I will go down to Minda's Savior and drink free Poole's Blood for the rest of our lives."

  "If it works. And if it doesn't work?"

  "Then what have we lost?" He tapped the screen. It switched to the external image. Panels blew out from the black casing fixed to the base of the pod; a zoomed-in view showed them the jeweled guts of the Susy drive.

  Then the data slate chimed an alarm. The Susy-drive display cleared, to reveal an image broadcast from the Coalition monitor drone—an image of an exploding star.

  "Damn," said Samm. "I didn't imagine it would be so quick."

  "Dad, look." The explosion was strongly asymmetrical, a flower of ugly light splashed across the slate. And there was a denser knot to one side of the supernova.

  Samm tapped the screen, overlaying analyses of mass density and velocity vectors. "That's a neutron star. The core of the Boss? It's been spat out of there like an apple seed-thousands of kilometers a second." He brought up a Galactic display. "Look at that! It's been fired straight out of the Association toward the Sagittarius Arm."

  "The Ghost home range." Green asterisks began to appear around the fleeing neutron star. "What's that?"

  "Ghost technology… Ghost ships, popping up out of nowhere. Settling into orbit around that neutron star. And, wow, look at that.'" A major green anomaly. "It has to have the mass of a planet."

  "The Ghostworld."

  "Looks like it. How are they bringing all this to the neutron star?"

  Donn said, 'Just by making it more likely that the planet should be in orbit around the neutron star than wherever it used to be."

  "What?"

  "To move an entire planet has to take a mess of energy. The gravity waves from the supernova? The Ambassador talked about tapping into that. They must be shielding the world from the supernova shock, too. They did it, Dad! Just as the Ambassador said they would. Oh, the Coalition ships can pursue them, but a runaway neutron star will smash through the Coalition lines as if they were made of rice paper."

  Samm brought back the Susy display and began to scroll through outputs. "Let's just hope this damn Susy drive lands us outside the Coalition's clutches, too."

  "Dad-don't you know?'"

  "I told you. It's kind of unreliable. We ought to end up just a little above the Galactic plane, however. Okay, it's ready."

  "As quickly as that?"

  "Well, that supernova shock wave is going to take a while to get here—years, as we're light-years off from the Boss. But we can't expect rescue for years either, even if the Coalition is willing to try; the gravity waves from the detonation are going to churn up hyperspace for a long time. Best to get out of here now if we can—and if this doesn't work, we might have time to figure out something else. I've sent an alarm out through the Reef."

  "Shouldn't we ask Mom first? It's her ship."

  "She'd only say no. Hang on to that rail. Good luck, son!" He stabbed a finger at his data slate.

  The Association stars turned to streaks and disappeared.

  * * *

  So, just as his father had tried to explain, Donn was leapfrogged through Susy-space. What he hadn't been told was what it would feel like.

  Susy-space was another universe, laid over Donn's own. It had its own laws. He was transformed into a supersymmetric copy of himself—an s-ghost in Susy-space. And it was… different. Things were blurred. Susy-space cut through the distinction between Donn, here, and the stars, out there. Donn could feel the scale of the journey, as if the arch of the universe were part of his own being. Distance crushed him.

  But at last it was done.

  * * *

  The Reef of ships popped out of Susy-space, sparkling with selectrons and neutralinos.

  Samm and Donn stared at each other. "Let's not do that again," said Donn.

  "Agreed." Samm tapped his data slate, to get an external view.

  Darkness, broken only by the faintest smudges of gray light.

  "Are they galaxies?" asked Donn.

  "Oops," said Samm.

  * * *

  THE TEAR

  Ian McDonald

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

  * * *

 
; British author Ian McDonald is an ambitious and daring writer with a wide range and an impressive amount of talent. His first story was published in 1982, and since then he has appeared with some frequency in Interzone, Asimov's Science Fiction, and elsewhere. In 1989 he won the Locus "Best First Novel" Award for his novel Desolation Road. He won the Philip K. Dick Award in 1992 for his novel King of Morning, Queen of Day. His other books include the novels Out on Blue Six, Hearts, Hands and Voices, Terminal Cafe, Sacrifice of Fools, Evolution's Shore, Kirinya, Ares Express, and Cyberabad; and a chapbook novella, Tendeleo's Story; as well as two collections of his short fiction, Empire Dreams and Speaking in Tongues. His novel River of Gods was a finalist for both the Hugo Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2005, and a novella drawn from it, "The Little Goddess," was a finalist for the Hugo and the Nebula. His most recent book is another new novel that's receiving critical raves, Brasyl. Born in Manchester, England, in 1960, McDonald has spent most of his life in Northern Ireland, and now lives and works in Belfast.

  In the lyrical and dazzling story that follows, one filled with enough wild new ideas, evocative milieus, bizarre characters, and twists and turns of plot to fill many another author's four-book trilogy, he takes us to a quiet waterworld to follow a young boy setting out on a voyage of discovery that will take him to many unexpected destinations both across the greater universe beyond and in the hidden depths of his own soul, one that will embroil him in the deadly clash of Galactic Empires, and that will take him home the long way to find that enemies can be as close and familiar as friends.

  * * *

  PTEY, SAILING

  On the night that Ptey voyaged out to have his soul shattered, eight hundred stars set sail across the sky. It was an evening at Great Winter's ending. The sunlit hours raced toward High Summer, each day lavishly more full of light than the one before. In this latitude, the sun hardly set at all after the spring equinox, rolling along the horizon, fat and idle and pleased with itself. Summer-born Ptey turned his face to the sun as it dipped briefly beneath the horizon, closed his eyes, enjoyed its lingering warmth on his eyelids, in the angle of his cheekbones, on his lips. To the Summer-born, any loss of the light was a reminder of the terrible, sad months of winter and the unbroken, encircling dark.

  But we have the stars, his father said, a Winter-born. We are born looking out into the universe.

  Ptey's father commanded the little machines that ran the catamaran, trimming sail, winding sheets, setting course by the tumble of satellites; but the tiller he held himself. The equinoctial gales had spun away to the west two weeks before and the catboat ran fast and fresh on a sweet wind across the darkening water. Twin hulls cut through the ripple-reflections of gas flares from the Temejveri oil platforms. As the sun slipped beneath the huge dark horizon and the warmth fell from the hollows of Ptey's face, so his father turned his face to the sky. Tonight, he wore his Steris Aspect. The ritual selves scared Ptey, so rarely were they unfurled in Ctarisphay: births, namings, betrothals and marriages, divorces and deaths. And of course, the Manifoldings. Familiar faces became distant and formal. Their language changed, their bodies seemed slower, heavier. They became possessed by strange, special knowledges. Only Steris possessed the language for the robots to sail the catamaran and, despite the wheel of positioning satellites around tilted Tay, the latitude and longitude of the Manifold House. The catamaran itself was only run out from its boathouse, to strong songs heavy with clashing harmonies, when a child from Ctarisphay on the edge of adulthood sailed out beyond the outer mole and the fleet of oil platforms to have his or her personality unfolded into eight.

  Only two months since, Cjatay had sailed out into the oily black of a late winter afternoon. Ptey was Summer-born, a Solstice boy; Cjatay a late Autumn. It was considered remarkable that they shared enough in common to be able to speak to each other, let alone become the howling boys of the neighborhood, the source of every broken window and borrowed boat. The best part of three seasons between them, but here was only two moons later, leaving behind the pulsing gas flares and maze of pipe work of the sheltering oil fields, heading into the great, gentle oceanic glow of the plankton blooms, steering by the stars, the occupied, haunted stars. The Manifolding was never a thing of moons and calendars, but of mothers' watchings and grandmothers' knowings and teachers' notings and fathers' murmurings, of subtly shifted razors and untimely lethargies, of deep-swinging voices and stained bedsheets.

  On Etjay Quay, where the porcelain houses leaned over the landing, Ptey had thrown his friend's bag down into the boat. Cjatay's father had caught it and frowned. There were observances. Ways. Forms.

  "See you," Ptey had said.

  "See you." Then the wind caught in the catamaran's tall, curved sails, and carried it away from the rain-wet, shiny faces of the houses of Ctarisphay. Ptey had watched the boat until it was lost in the light dapple of the city's lamps on the winter-dark water. See Cjatay he would, after his six months on the Manifold House. But only partially. There would be Cjatays he had never known, never even met. Eight of them, and the Cjatay with whom he had stayed out all the brief Low Summer nights of the prith run on the fishing staithes, skinny as the piers' wooden legs silhouetted against the huge sun kissing the edge of the world, would be but a part, a dream of one of the new names and new personalities. Would he know him when he met him on the great floating university that was the Manifold House?

  Would he know himself?

  "Are they moving yet?" Steris called from the tiller. Ptey shielded his dark-accustomed eyes against the pervasive glow of the carbon-absorbing plankton blooms and peered into the sky. Sail of Bright Anticipation cut two lines of liquid black through the gently undulating sheet of biolight, fraying at the edges into fractal curls of luminescence as the sheets of microorganisms sought each other.

  "Nothing yet."

  But it would be soon, and it would be tremendous. Eight hundred stars setting out across the night. Through the changes and domestic rituals of his sudden Manifolding, Ptey had been aware of sky-watch parties being arranged, star-gazing groups setting up telescopes along the quays and in the campaniles, while day on day the story moved closer to the head of the news. Half the world-that half of the world not blinded by its extravagant axial tilt-would be looking to the sky. Watching Steris rig Sail of Bright Anticipation, Ptey had felt cheated, like a sick child confined to bed while festival raged across the boats lashed beneath his window. Now, as the swell of the deep dark of his world's girdling ocean lifted the twin prows of Sail of Bright Anticipation, on his web of shock-plastic mesh ahead of the mast, Ptey felt his excitement lift with it. A carpet of lights below, a sky of stars above: all his alone.

  They were not stars. They were the eight hundred and twenty-six space habitats of the Anpreen Commonweal, spheres of nanocarbon ice and water five hundred kilometers in diameter that for twice Ptey's lifetime had adorned Bephis, the ringed gas giant, like a necklace of pearls hidden in a velvet bag, far from eye and mind. The negotiations fell into eras. The Panic; when the world of Tay became aware that the gravity waves pulsing through the huge ripple tank that was their ocean-bound planet were the bow-shocks of massive artifacts decelerating from near lightspeed. The Denial, when Tay's governments decided it was Best Really to try to hide the fact that their solar system had been immigrated into by eight hundred and some space vehicles, each larger than Tay's petty moons, falling into neat and proper order around Bephis. The Soliciting, when it became obvious that Denial was futile-but on our terms, our terms. A fleet of space probes was dispatched to survey and attempt radio contact with the arrivals-as yet silent as ice. And, when they were not blasted from space or vaporized or collapsed into quantum black holes or any of the plethora of fanciful destructions imagined in the popular media, the Overture. The Sobering, when it was realized that these star-visitors existed primarily as swarms of free-swimming nanoassemblers in the free-fall spherical oceans of their eight hundred and some habitats, one mind with many forms; and, for th
e Anpreen, the surprise that these archaic hominiforms on this backwater planet were many selves within one body. One thing they shared and understood well. Water. It ran through their histories, it flowed around their ecologies, it mediated their molecules. After one hundred and twelve years of near-lightspeed flight, the Anpreen Commonweal was desperately short of water; their spherical oceans shriveled almost into zero gravity teardrops within the immense, nanotech-reinforced ice shells. Then began the era of Negotiation, the most prolonged of the phases of contact, and the most complex. It had taken three years to establish the philosophical foundations: the Anpreen, an ancient species of the great Clade, had long been a colonial mind, arranged in subtle hierarchies of self-knowledge and ability, and did not know whom to talk to, whom to ask for a decision, in a political system with as many governments and nations as there were islands and archipelagos scattered across the world ocean of the fourth planet from the sun.

  Now the era of Negotiation had become the era of Open Trade. The Anpreen habitats spent their last drops of reaction mass to break orbit around Bephis and move the Commonweal insystem. Their destination was not Tay, but Tejaphay, Tay's sunward neighbor, a huge waterworld of unbroken ocean one hundred kilometers deep, crushing gravity, and endless storms.

  A billion years before the seed ships probed the remote star system, the gravitational interplay of giant worlds had sent the least of their number spiraling sunward. Solar wind had stripped away its huge atmosphere and melted its mantle of water ice into a planetary ocean, deep and dark as nightmares. It was that wink of water in the system-scale interferometers of the Can-Bet-Merey people, half a million years before, that had inspired them to fill their night sky with solar sails as one hundred thousand slow seed ships rode out on flickering launch lasers toward the new system. An evangelically pro-life people were the Can-Bet-Merey, zealous for the Clade's implicit dogma that intelligence was the only force in the universe capable of defeating the physical death of space-time.