Spheres of Influence

by Ryk E. Spoor

  “If I understand the implied question, indeed. In the days following your departure, I considered a number of things, and decided that as it was very likely you would remain some of my most valuable allies, it would be wise to adjust my ship to allow you some comfort.” He extended wings and arms a moment in a walking bow. “I am, of course, well used to adjusting to change.”

  “It’s beautifully done,” Laila said. “I can see where you must have done the modifications—these curves are part of the essential structure, but other areas are obviously modified. What’s left still is quite interesting from a biological point of view.”

  Orphan looked at her with mock concern. “By the Minds, you will discern my uttermost secrets in my architecture! What an error I have made!”

  Ariane laughed, as did the others. “You’d already learned more than that from our stay in your Embassy. And here you’ve put that to good use.”

  They entered what proved to be an elevator—one that seemed to have a minimal number of stops. Probably a quick travel mechanism for the crucial areas of the vessel.

  The door of the elevator slid up, rather than sideways, revealing a gigantic control room so filled with gleaming consoles, levers, solidly-placed viewscreens, and padded, anchored chairs that Ariane found herself irresistably reminded of something from the Age of Steam. “These are all hand controls!” she said.

  “Well, some by foot. And normally one or two for the tail, but I’ve redesigned that. But yes, all manual. Trusting automation in the Arena is a game for the newly-hatched. Some automation works, as you have discovered, but it is rarely as good as a living person at doing anything. Does this bother you?”

  Ariane was already examining the controls. “Oh, no, not one little bit. I just need to learn how all this works.”

  “And that is of course why you, in particular, are here, Captain Austin,” Orphan said. “No better student to learn the basics of piloting this vessel and pass on what you have learned.”

  “Hold on,” DuQuesne said. “You’re not giving us this one, are you?”

  Orphan flicked his hands out in the no gesture. “Oh, my apologies. I did indeed misspeak. This vessel shall remain mine, of course. But the others have all had their controls modeled in the same way, allowing for difference in size and particular mission, so if you learn the ways of Zounin-Ginjou you will be prepared for any of our vessels.”

  “Why the big window?” Wu Kung asked. “This is a warship. Why weaken it?”

  Orphan laughed. “An obvious and direct question, but one which makes too many assumptions, Sun Wu Kung. While it is true that the failure mode of the window is an abrupt shattering rather than the bending of ordinary metal, that window—and those of most warships—is composed of carefully layered carbon with reinforcement of the crystal structure via specific structural . . .” he apparently noticed Wu’s expression. “Well, never mind. In short, while sufficient force can shatter the window, such a force would puncture the hull as well, and you will find such windows on many vessels throughout the Arena.”

  “Transparent ring-carbon composite,” DuQuesne said. “Yeah, we use it too—and it is a pain to make a lot of it, compared to regular hull material. The microstructure needed to make it pass light is pretty complex—that’s what makes it shatter instead of just bend and tear, also.”

  Orphan seated himself at the central control panel. “Observe carefully, Ariane Austin. By the time we arrive at your Sphere, I hope to make you a decent, if not yet expert, pilot of such a vessel.”

  I’ve got a lot to learn. Just the sheer size of the Liberated battleship was vastly different from anything she’d flown before; it was much bigger than Holy Grail even counting the Grail’s drive spines, and Holy Grail had been by far the largest ship Ariane had ever flown. Adding into that the idea of sails—for purposes she could guess but had never actually had to address—variable gravity, and so on, it was going to be a great challenge.

  Engines thrummed to life and lights blossomed across the board. “Have I got the lighting correct?” Orphan asked. “I deduced from the devices I have seen that the color green is for things in good condition, red for poor condition or emergencies.”

  “Pretty darn close,” DuQuesne said with an impressed tone. “Given that your color receptors aren’t ours and whatever your experience of green, it isn’t ours either. I’d adjust the color a bit—these look more blue-ish than green to me.”

  “We shall do so once we are well under way.” Orphan’s long-fingered, slightly clawed hands danced over buttons, pulled levers, and she felt Zounin-Ginjou waking up, starting to shake off inaction, moving more and more swiftly up and away from the Docks. “Did you see what I did there?”

  “Okay . . . those are for the side thrusters. Those are the angle . . . you can adjust them for side to side or up and down as you want. That was for the main engines, and the pedals are for the rudders and elevators.”

  “Excellent! I knew you would be a quick study given your background, and it is good to see my expectations confirmed.”

  “When we get to our Sphere,” Ariane said, glancing to DuQuesne, “I think I’ll sit down with Carl and Steve and work up a full emulation of one of these control rooms. Then we can get people practicing in virtual first.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “Now that we are well away,” Orphan said, “would you tell me where your Gateway is?”

  “Go vertical,” DuQuesne said. “When Simon’s probe popped through and got pics, we could tell he’d come out well above Nexus Arena.”

  “Very good.”

  As Zounin-Ginjou began to climb, Ariane suddenly blinked. “Holy sh . . . I mean, what the heck? Orphan, you haven’t increased power since we left the docks and we just went vertical . . . so there isn’t any gravity here, since we’re still accelerating just the way we were before . . .”

  “And so . . . ?” She swore the nearly-human face wore a sly smile.

  “So how come I’m still standing on the deck instead of floating around? Have you guys figured out how to generate gravity yourselves?”

  DuQuesne shook his head. “I think I know the answer, and it starts with Shade and ends with weaver. Right?”

  Orphan looked somehow slightly put out, as though he had been looking forward to a more convoluted explanation. “In essence, yes. When possible, most Factions will try to put such gravitic stability on their vessels through a bargain either with the Shadeweavers or Faith. In my case, the Shadeweavers. It makes things so much easier for most species.”

  They were now climbing well away from Nexus Arena. Ariane caught her breath. “My God.”

  DuQuesne, who had been studying the controls, glanced up, and mumbled one of his ancient anachronistic curses.

  “Ahhh,” Orphan said. “This is the first time you have truly seen Nexus Arena.”

  “I thought . . . it was just a larger Sphere,” Ariane heard herself say.

  Nexus Arena was not a sphere, but a gargantuan cylinder with slightly rounded ends, a hundred thousand kilometers high, perhaps half that across. It had no ecosystem on top, no emulation of some other world; it was a bare, perfect sweep of the invulnerable quark-latticework material Simon had named CQC, Coherent Quark Composite, fifty thousand gently curving kilometers of polished, shining armor which made ring-carbon composite look as soft and fragile as cotton candy. Layers of clouds and mistiness of atmosphere softened the distant bottom of Nexus Arena into near-invisibility against the endless multicolored abyss of the Arena. The Docks which had seemed so huge were now tiny things, of less consequence than the hairs on a man’s arm, clustered around one tiny section of that incomprehensibly huge construct—which was itself not even a dust-mote within the indescribably larger construct which was the Arena itself.

  Zounin-Ginjou’s engines now roared with power, a keening thrum vibrating the deck; the vibrations rose and then suddenly diminuendoed away. Ariane realized that without significant gravity to hinder her, Zounin-Ginjou was climbing
at the same rate she would move forward in level flight on Earth—and Zounin-Ginjou had just passed the sound barrier and was continuing to accelerate. They had been driving upward for many minutes now, yet still the top of Nexus Arena loomed beneath them like the Earth below an airplane, so huge that the mind could not grasp it.

  To distract herself, she looked slightly up, studying Zounin-Ginjou in flight. She noticed suddenly that it looked somehow different than it had when they first took off. The hull had flattened out slightly and she saw the “sails” had puffed and curved subtly. “Oh, I see. They’re also part of conformal aerodynamics.”

  “Precisely. The automatics to do much of that . . . are reliable enough, and you can adjust manually at the console. As we are not in a terrible hurry I do not think we need reconfigure for maximum speed. Still, since we will have to pass the gravity sheath at twenty thousand kilometers to reach the gateway area, some speed is advised. Even at this speed, it will be quite some hours before we reach the Sky Gate region.” He flipped a control which was obviously for a simple autopilot and stood. “Let me give you a tour of this vessel—for you shall soon have some of your own!”

  CHAPTER 27

  Impressive, DuQuesne thought. Not quite up to the standards Seaton and I set, but then, this is real.

  As he’d guessed, Zounin-Ginjou was a luxuriously-appointed battleship, a warship with an admittedly thick coat of ocean-liner paint. The fact that Orphan was the lone member of the Liberated had obviously driven him to push the limits of automation in the Arena—and had drastically reduced normal requirements for crew quarters. Because of this, the cabins remaining were quite fancy, and he’d still sacrificed nothing in the way of warship readiness.

  There were missile batteries, and hypersonic cannon, and very powerful energy weapons, point-defense rotating cannon that would shred any approaching missile, chaff and reflective cloud dispensers to confuse attackers or even blunt energy attacks. Multiple, widely dispersed yet massive superconductor storage cells stored immense amounts of energy for the ship. Stowage for spare components for every system. And . . .

  The hull of this thing . . . I think it’s multilayered, and judging from things he’s almost said, it might have reinforcement from decidedly non-standard sources. This wasn’t a terrible surprise; Orphan had worked with the Shadeweavers for a long time, and while he now was out of debt to them, he’d obviously taken great advantage of the affiliation in the past several centuries. I wonder if any of those extra features will be on the ones he’s lending us.

  The surprising part was that Orphan had let such information drop, even in an indirect fashion. He glanced at Laila as Orphan was describing one of the arrow-shaped shuttles and its operation to a fascinated Ariane.

  She nodded. “I don’t think I’ve seen anyone so lonely, Marc,” she murmured.

  She read me real well, there. It was things like that which could trigger Hyperion paranoia, and he hammered the suspicions down. Ariane made the decision on how we were going to treat her, and she was right. “Wondered if you’d caught that.”

  The brown eyes were both analytical and sympathetic, gazing at the tall semi-insectoid figure. “He is almost unable to stop talking. For the first time in . . . perhaps centuries . . . he has people aboard one of his own ships that he can call friends.”

  “Didn’t realize you were a shrink as well as a biologist.”

  Laila chuckled. “There are relationships. I am interested in the behavior of life as well as its structure.” She shook her head with an amazed air. “Centuries. Marc, we live a long time now, but are even we able to live for as long as he has?”

  “I don’t know. Hell, we haven’t had the chance to find out.” Marc didn’t mention that, as far as he could tell, he hadn’t actually aged significantly since he reached the age of about twenty-five—which was fifty years ago. Which is going some several steps past what the current longevity treatments expect.

  “So,” he said, raising his voice, “we’ll take one of those down to the surface when we get to our Sphere?”

  “To drop off Captain Austin and Sun Wu Kung at least, yes,” Orphan said.

  “And me,” Laila said. “I’m going to be doing some sampling and studies on our Upper Sphere; it’s fascinating how there’s so much very Earthlike life on it that is, at the same time, utterly alien.”

  “Undoubtedly,” Orphan agreed, and turned to lead them back up to the control room or bridge of the ship. “The questions as to exactly how—not to mention why—the Arena accomplishes all this are ages old, as I am sure you know.”

  He looked at DuQuesne. “Might I ask, then, if Doctor Sandrisson will be able to accompany us?”

  DuQuesne grinned. “My guess? You’d have to try to keep him out with a ninety-meter fence charged with a few thousand volts. This will be his first chance to look at what another civilization’s actually done with the Sandrisson Drive, since you use that for these Sky Gate transitions.”

  Orphan’s buzz-chortle rang out. “Indeed! I had not thought of it that way, but of course you are correct. I will need at least some assistance in bringing the fleet across, even with the very finest automation and remote control, and I am sure you agree that we do not want to invite just anyone on this trip.”

  “That’s for damn sure,” DuQuesne agreed, and both Ariane and Wu nodded emphatically. “But that’s going to only be three of us. Will that be enough? We do have more people now—first group’s settling in, and that’s quite a few more.”

  Outward flick of the hands. “I am afraid the three of us will have to suffice. You recall our discussion in my embassy, some time back? I see you do. Well, I trust you, Doctor DuQuesne, and Captain Austin, and the rest of you,” he bob-bowed in Laila’s direction, “who were here in the beginning; and I will of course trust this most formidable warrior who guards your Captain,” another bow, this one to Wu Kung.

  “But these newcomers are as yet untested, unknown to me, and I am quite aware that your ‘ambassadors’ are not entirely happy with your position, Captain Austin. With that in mind, I cannot allow such people on board my vessel, for they may have goals and interests . . . not well synchronized with my own, shall we say.”

  “Got you.” DuQuesne couldn’t argue that. He was pretty sure that his old friend Molly wasn’t on Naraj’s payroll, but the rest, not really. And even if they weren’t, there were things you trusted people with, and things you thought real hard about before you trusted anyone with them. “So we’re going to see your home system?”

  Orphan laughed, even as the door opened and they entered the control room again. “I must confess, Doctor DuQuesne, I am not quite that trusting. But even showing you how to reach the system in which I have placed your vessels would bring you quite close to my home, and that is itself not knowledge I would trust with many at all.”

  Ariane raised an eyebrow. “You now know where our Sphere is.”

  “Which, you would admit, is necessary if I am to know how to bring your vessels here,” Orphan pointed out. “Really, Captain, are you expecting me to give up such a key advantage simply out of your sense of fair play?”

  DuQuesne saw her shrug and grin. “No, I guess not. And if we don’t know it, we can’t accidentally blab to the Blessed.”

  “Precisely,” Orphan said, and continued with just a touch of acid, “especially as you are currently engaged in extensive negotiations with them.”

  “Really, Orphan, are you expecting me to give up such a potentially wonderful ally merely out of your sense of fair play?”

  Orphan did laugh loudly at that, as did DuQuesne and the others. “Well turned, Captain Austin. Well turned indeed.”

  Wu suddenly stiffened and bounded to the window, pressing his face against the glassy material. “Wow! What are those?”

  What looked like a congregation of blue and red beach balls with tentacles waving from their surfaces was visible ahead and to the left. Zounin-Ginjou was rapidly overtaking the things, but they were clearly moving
under their own power. As they drew nearer, DuQuesne could see multiple glittering eyes and other openings. They’re big—tens of meters across, maybe more.

  “Ahh! Those are virrin,” answered Orphan, coming forward. “They are grazers, eating various native sky-plants such as yaolain. They must be looking for . . . ah, yes, over there.” He pointed, and DuQuesne squinted, seeing what looked like a drifting green-blue cloud. “There is yaolain. Something to avoid when flying, especially if you’re using an engine that sucks in air, like a jet; it will foul and damage your engine very easily in that case.”

  DuQuesne nodded. “Seems to grow in clumps like sargasso weed. Do you get large fields of it?”

  “Indeed you do, Doctor DuQuesne. I have personally seen masses the diameter of a Sphere and kilometers thick.”

  “Ha!” said Ariane suddenly, pointing down and to the right. “Those look familiar. Zikki, right?”

  The streamlined shapes were darting along in ragged formation, seemingly just ahead of Zounin-Ginjou. Which is really impressive when you remember that we’re doing Mach 2 here. How the hell do living beings manage that?

  “Close, Ariane Austin, but not quite. Those are tzchina. They are, as near we can tell, of some close relation to zikki, but very much different in most ways other than the superficial exterior. Much smarter, for one thing—they evade most hunters easily and seem able to learn from almost any experience. As you can see, they’ve learned to take advantage of compression waves near vessels, as well.”

  Laila was next to Wu Kung, and DuQuesne thought that she’d pushed her face up to the window even harder. “The virrin, they have panoramic vision and tentacles . . . are they also related to the zikki?”

  “No, I do not believe so. The current belief, in fact, is that they are much more closely related to the vanthume.”

  “Really? That twenty-kilometer-long filter feeder?”

  “Correct. That is the biological consensus as far as I am aware. For details, I am afraid you should find another biologist.”