Salvation

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Then tell me why you are alone in the Salvation of Life?” the imam said. “You have been traveling for countless millennia; you have visited thousands of stars. Why has no one else joined you?”

  “That is the saddest part of our journey, for we have discovered how terribly rare life is in this galaxy. And sentient life is the rarest of all. So many times we have listened to the faint radio cries of civilizations as they rise and fall. Very few ever succeed in reaching the stage you have achieved. Normally, all we find are empty ruins and creatures who have sunk back into the unthinking abyss as their star grows cold. This is why we love and cherish you so much. You are the most precious of all life; and to coexist in a galaxy so vast in space and time, to actually meet you and offer guidance, is truly a miracle. It will probably only happen a dozen times between now and the end of our flight.”

  “Statistics can be a real bitch, it would seem,” the cardinal said in a level tone.

  I caught the imam’s lips twitching in surreptitious satisfaction.

  “Do you have any records of these lost civilizations you encountered?” Nahuel asked. “I would be most fascinated to see them.”

  “I will inquire,” Eol-2 said. “They would be small indeed, for we place no importance on such encounters. Our gaze is upon the future and the glory that awaits us there.”

  * * *

  —

  “What are your thoughts?” Nahuel asked me that evening as we ate supper. Thankfully, we’d been entrusted to manage that by ourselves. Eol-2 had shown us a communal area beside the yurts with freezers full of prepackaged human meals and a row of microwaves, along with a small selection of bottles. Before leaving us, Eol-2 imparted our schedule for tomorrow, which was mostly lectures going into greater detail of the pilgrimage and what their equivalent of philosophers thought they could contribute to the God’s deliberations about what universe to usher into existence next. There was also time reserved for us to advance our beliefs to the Olyix, but to me that looked like a polite afterthought.

  “I think we need an astrophysicist to start asking some difficult questions about quantum cosmology,” I told him.

  “I believe those questions have been asked many times since contact. No substantiated astrophysical proof has ever been provided for their assertion that the universe is cyclic in nature, and each iteration can only exist for a finite time. In that respect, they exceed even our most facile popularist politicians when it comes to delivering on a promise.”

  “That’s what I’m finding the most difficult about this,” I admitted. “They reached a technological level that allowed them to build the Salvation of Life and heaven knows how many other arkships. They’ve devoted their everlasting lives to voyaging to the end of the universe—which, face it, is probably going to be physically impossible—yet they can’t provide quantifiable scientific proof that the universe follows the cyclic theory.”

  The cardinal turned to face me. “We have enough evidence in cosmological background radiation to confirm the Big Bang, which in itself argues against steady state.”

  “At least the Big Bang allows for a theoretical state that will lead to an ultimate heat death,” Nahuel said. “Not that the heat death of the universe is the ideal sequence to birth this God at the End of Time. I’m not even sure you can call heat death the end of time.”

  “An emergent god would have to reverse the maximum entropy state,” the cardinal mused. “That’s not an act of creation. It’s regenerating what already exists.”

  “We’re getting lost in semantics,” Nahuel countered.

  “Forty-two.”

  “Excuse me?” I queried.

  “Old joke,” the cardinal admitted. “The number of angels that can actually dance on a pinhead.”

  “See?” I told both of them. “This is why we need an astrophysicist.”

  “You are right, my friend,” Nahuel said insistently. “Everything they do is based on the cyclic theory, but they have provided nothing to prove its eventuality. It could even be said they refuse to supply it. Yet, paradoxically, their belief is so strong, so intrinsic to what they are, that a proof must surely exist. Nobody would travel like this without proof.”

  “Ah.” The cardinal held up a whiskey tumbler and smiled contentedly at us. “This is why we are here, is it not? We are the ones who understand: Above all, you have to have faith. Cheers.” He downed the shot in one.

  * * *

  —

  I got back to my yurt and sniffed cautiously. Sure enough, there was a melange of spice, flower perfume, and cologne. I went into the bathroom area and carefully opened the cupboard doors. The eggs had hatched, producing five hundred flies that were crawling sluggishly all over the shelf. Most of the nutrient in the glasses had been consumed.

  I told Sandjay to switch on my emitter peripheral. The tiny lens embedded in my left eye began to shine ultraviolet light across the seething mass of insects. These flies had synthetic eight-letter DNA, which, as well as accelerating their pupae stage, gave them a neuroprocessor instead of a natural brain. My ultraviolet pulse triggered a full boot-up, which took about a second. In response, they all activated their emitters. The cupboard was doused in ultraviolet light as the linc program connected them into a coherent swarm.

  Data splashed down my tarsus lenses. Hatching rate had been over ninety percent successful. Malformation rate was under two percent. Linc connection was enacted. I had a viable swarm, each one endowed with a biosensor capable of detecting a quantum spatial entanglement, courtesy of their eight-letter DNA. Individually, the detector worked at extremely short range—just a couple of meters. Collectively, that sense was expanded by two orders of magnitude.

  Now all I had to do was get the swarm to the general area where we suspected the portals were situated: biochamber four.

  Sections of my bagez unclipped into a series of innocuous rods and rings. But clipped together in the right sequence they became basic tools—spanner, screwdriver, pliers…I took the panel off the side of the bath and set about opening the hatch cover underneath. Like the rest of the bathroom, it was human built, with locknuts on each corner that had stiffened over time. After plenty of sweaty effort I got them all off and levered the hatch up. No matter what angle I looked at it, that opening was not large. Getting through was going to be tight and most likely painful. But other agents had gotten through on scouting runs, so—

  I stripped off and took my jogging kit out of my bagez. Like every good fitness fanatic I used several layers, from inner skintights to more baggy outers, finishing with a waterproof for any inclement weather. I was only interested in the skintights, which gripped as tight as any wet suit. The top even had a hood, which combined with my sunglasses, covered every square centimeter of skin. Sandjay interfaced with it, and the fabric surface turned a perfect black. As well as being visually nonreflective, it absorbed a vast section of the electromagnetic spectrum should you try probing it with radar or laser sweeps. And that was just its outer surface. Long ribbons of thermal battery were woven into the arms, legs, spine, neck, and skull, which used a web of heat-duct fibers to soak up all my body heat, making me thermally neutral. The ribbons could accumulate ten hours of heat before they needed to pump it out. A gill mask neutered my breath, siphoning out the heat and scrubbing telltale biochemical leaks. Wearing that stealth suit, I was like an empty human-shaped hole in the universe.

  Sandjay linced to the fly swarm and sent them streaming down through the hatchway. I sucked in my gut and slipped through after them.

  There was a cramped utility compartment running under all the yurts. It was filled with human-built sanitation equipment, which sterilized all the water and effluent from the baths, showers, and toilets above. Chemical and solid waste was separated out and stored in tanks that would ultimately be vented into space, while the clean water was released back into the Salvation of Life’s main enviro
nmental cycle. That was the outlet pipe I was looking for.

  The compartment’s floor was made from thick carbon slabs, as hard as granite. Agents we’d sent in before had cut the slab that the outlet pipe went through, slicing it into manageable rectangles with angled sides to hold them in place. Pulling them up was a bitch. They were as heavy as stone, and I was crouched over, which is a bad position to be lifting. Eventually I got them clear, and dropped down through the hole into a tunnel carved into the naked rock.

  Pipes and cables ran along it, not all rigid and fastened into place like humans would lay them, but twining around like ivy clinging to the tunnel walls. They even looked like they were alive, or at least had been. I thought maybe a plant with hollow trunks, like terrestrial bamboo, that grew along the tunnel, then died and hardened, producing a natural tube. It made a kind of sense, given the way the Olyix liked to integrate their biological systems with mechanical ones.

  Sandjay splashed an enhanced image across my tarsus lenses. The suit’s thermal sensors showed me that several of the meandering tubes were warm, containing a heated fluid of some type, while the magnetic scan gave power cables a gold-sparkle glow. My inertial navigation took a location fix, and I set off down the tunnel.

  Twenty percent of the fly swarm was behind me as I scrambled over the meandering tubes, covering my ass in case an Olyix came along on an inspection or maintenance job. The rest buzzed on ahead, scouting the way. Just as in the tunnel we’d driven through earlier, there were intersections and splits. Some went straight up; others branched down into the unknown depths. There were times when the tunnel sloped so much I had to get down on my hands and knees and crawl along to stop myself from slipping.

  Inevitably, it wasn’t a straight route toward the rear of the arkship. I had to check the inertial navigation every time the swarm found another junction, working out which was the way forward. Five times I miscalculated and had to turn back and try again as the tunnel I chose started to curve away. But then some tunnels were almost devoid of cables and tubes, allowing me to jog along for long stretches. Without those, I would never have made it back before morning.

  After the inertial navigation confirmed I’d passed the end of the third biochamber, I started looking for a route into the fourth. There were plenty of junctions that had branched off into the bigger transport tunnels, with vehicles trundling along them. I began splitting the swarm at intersections, sending them out exploring farther ahead. Eventually, when I was four hundred meters short of where we’d worked out the fourth biochamber to be, I found a transport tunnel that seemed to be heading in the right direction.

  The swarm flew on ahead, but there were no vehicles about. My problem now was the light. The transport tunnel was illuminated by long bright strips halfway up the walls. If the swarm saw anything coming, I’d have to sprint for a junction. There weren’t many of them.

  Four hundred meters. Most Olympic athletes could cover that distance in forty-five seconds. I was fit, and had some gene-up treatments, but not to that level. Besides, I was in a two-thirds gravity field—also not conducive to speed. Best estimate was over a minute.

  The swarm snaked through the air in a long line before starting to spread out. There were three junctions between me and the start of the fourth biochamber. That gave me reasonable odds of reaching cover if anything appeared.

  I drew down some deep breaths, then started running.

  A minute seventeen, if you’re that keen to know. I didn’t go balls-out because I might need to keep moving when I reached it—or race back.

  The fourth biochamber had a climate similar to the first. Its vegetation seemed more wild and ragged, as if they didn’t maintain it to the same standard. There were no Olyix near the tunnel entrance.

  I scooted into the cover of the shaggy trees and sent the swarm out in a circular formation, scanning for signs of life. A hundred-meter perception bubble revealed dozens of birds, hundreds of insects, but no large alien bodies moving around. My peripherals swept the electromagnetic spectrum, which was almost silent.

  The trees threw heavy shade on the ground. It was useful cover. I stayed underneath the branches as the swarm reshaped into a row and began a circumferential sweep—the first of many. Sandjay was already plotting a methodical spiral course that would see them cover the entire interior. Looking up through the gaps in the leaves, I saw a distinct clearing along the equatorial line. The trees had given way to a perfectly circular patch of mustard-yellow moss. At the center was a five-sided pyramid structure, an easy hundred meters high but only twenty meters across the base. I’d never seen any kind of building in the other three biochambers. When I shifted position to get a better view, I caught sight of another clearing, also on the equator. I moved out into an open area between the trees. There were five identical clearings, each with a tall structure in the middle. I diverted the swarm to the nearest one so they could relay high-resolution scans back to me.

  THE ASSESSMENT TEAM

  FERITON KAYNE, NKYA, JUNE 26, 2204

  “Okay, and?” Callum asked in fascination.

  “Those structures in the center of each clearing were like slim Aztec temples, or very tall obelisks,” I told my rapt audience. “Personally, I prefer the second option. They didn’t seem to have any kind of entrance, at least not at ground level. And there weren’t any openings higher up, either. But the clincher is the hieroglyphics. The exterior of each one was covered in them.”

  “Have you translated it?” Eldlund asked eagerly.

  “No,” I admitted, letting a hint of frustration show. “This isn’t like a code, or an ancient human language. There is no possible Rosetta stone available to us here. The symbols are plain enough, just lines and shapes, but they are completely alien. There’s simply no way of interpreting them. The only way we’ll ever get to find out what they say is to ask the Olyix. And we can’t really do that.”

  “I don’t get it,” Loi said in a petulant tone. “Why would they keep them secret?”

  “The one thing the fly swarm did determine for me was the type of stone they were made out of,” I said.

  “What is it?”

  “Sedimentary. It had a granular structure. There were no sharp edges left anywhere, and a lot of the symbols had worn down. Which is significant in that placid environment.”

  “So?” Kandara demanded.

  “The Salvation of Life was an asteroid,” Alik explained to her in a tediously patronizing tone. “You only find sedimentary rock on a planet. Which means those obelisks were brought on board from—what?” He lifted a quizzical eyebrow at me. “The Olyix home world?”

  “That’s our theory,” I said. “The obelisks are incredibly ancient, which makes them the most sacred relics the Olyix possess. Obviously, they have a deeply religious significance. It may even be that those symbols contain their proof of the cyclic-state universe—which, given the level of their orthodoxy, can never be challenged, let alone by an upstart species like us.”

  “Hence the whole secrecy obsession,” Kandara concluded, her head dipping in understanding.

  Callum leaned forward in his chair, keen for details. “What about the fly swarm? Did they detect any quantum spatial entanglement?”

  “No.” I shrugged. “Obviously there’s a great deal of volume inside the Salvation of Life we haven’t explored, but the fourth biochamber is their biggest, darkest secret. And in strategic terms, it’s irrelevant. They just don’t want us disbelieving aliens contaminating it with our heresy.”

  I could tell from Callum’s creased brow that he was about to fire off another query, which is when events became strange. I saw Alik starting to pour himself another bourbon from his precious vintage bottle. His focus shifted to me, his eyes widening, betraying surprise. Then his fingers began to open, allowing the bottle to fall. My attention flowed to Kandara in the chair next to him, who was grabbing a handful of roast pis
tachios from a dish. Her formidable muscles were stiffening in a classic threat response. I even saw her forearm flesh ripple as buried peripherals activated. Suspicion and alarm triggered a strong sense of threat within me, and I determined something very wrong was occurring behind my chair. My head started to turn as I heard Callum’s panicked yell begin, and I caught a blur of motion. Jessika was standing behind me, face contorted with effort, her arms gripping a long red pole she was swinging toward me. Instinct forced my own arm up protectively even as I attempted to duck. It was no use at all; she was moving too fast. Then I saw the wickedly sharp head of the fire axe as it expanded into my vision, becoming my whole universe. I even briefly heard the cracking sound of my skull breaking as it struck. Then the blade penetrated my brain—

  JULOSS

  YEAR 593 AA

  Before they left, before every item of human technology in the Juloss star system was reduced to its constituent atoms, they went back to Kabronski Station’s garden for a final nostalgic look. Their marble table by the little waterfall was still there, the elegant koi sliding about in the water just as they always had.

  “I feel like we should take them with us,” Dellian said as he watched the fish glide across the pond and vanish under the sluggish waterfall, only to reappear again a few seconds later.

  Yirella slipped her arm around his shoulders. “You can’t think like that. Not anymore.”

  “I know.”

  Together they looked up through the vaulting geodesic glass roof. Juloss was a thick crescent below the station, its terminator line creeping across the Deng Ocean.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said wistfully.

  “We can come back. When it’s over.”