Hydrogen Steel

by K. A. Bedford

  It took more than an hour to find all the cracks and holes and fix them. Meanwhile, the ship was still without power. The displacement drive had left us in a high orbit around Europa, but without main power we weren’t going anywhere. Worse, we were vulnerable. The Otaru node was busy working on the powerplant, and where he had used his headware systems to give us temporary displacement capability, he was now using them in a different configuration to get the powerplant up to around ten percent output, enough to provide limited ShipMind, sensors, and environment control, but not enough to go anywhere. Running the powerplant at more than maximum load had done the system no good, but Gideon reported that he had some ideas on getting it back to the point where it might allow propulsion. It might take a while, however.

  “How long’s a while?” I asked from my tank.

  “Perhaps a day or so, depending on what I find.”

  “What’s the node say?”

  “He says we can have displacement capability, or we can have ShipMind and everything that goes with that. He’s running it with his own headware. Don’t ask me to explain how that works.”

  “We’re sitting ducks if we just stay here.”

  Gideon reported there was no sign of Hydrogen Steel on sensors.

  I said, “Of course. The bastard’s probably got the best stealth kit in the universe”.

  My body was healing. Despite all the banging and crashing about in recent times, I wasn’t in as much pain as I had been earlier. I could think more clearly. And, with thinking, came reflection on everything going on. The name “Parallax Corporation”, kept coming back to me. Did they really exist, or were they just part of the reality of my hallucinations? Then there was the stuff we’d found down in the Europa bank, in Airlie’s security deposit box. Everything you’d need to change your identity. You’d go down to the bank as Airlie Fallow, former scientist, and emerge as someone else entirely, as far as the official records of human space were concerned. You’d then head off to Aldebaran, get some information from your lover’s anonymous maildrop at the Heart of Darkness hab, and then you’d go underground, presumably with your lover, somewhere quiet, where nobody would ever think to look for you.

  “Can we get to Aldebaran?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” Gideon said. “If we can get the powerplant and displacement drive back online we’d have a chance. It’s a bit of a long shot, though.” His voice sounded strained.

  “What do we do if we get some unexpected company?” I asked, referring to Hydrogen Steel.

  “Beg for mercy,” said Gideon.

  I swore. “I can’t just float around in this bloody tank all day.”

  “You’re no use to anyone if you come out before you’re all fixed, McGee.”

  “The thing here says I need another two hours or so.”

  “Read a book. Catch up on the news.”

  “I’m going mental.”

  “You were mental to start with. Just relax. The node fellow and I have got this under control.”

  I checked through the latest news headlines. It was a bad idea: news was thin. There was almost nothing from outside the Home System. Hypertubes were almost all gone. Ships and countless people were stranded everywhere. The whole machinery of our civilization was grinding to a halt. The most recent bulletins from outside the Home System reported that chaos, war, panic, disease and strife of all kinds had been sweeping across every world, every habitat and settlement, even through many ships. Meanwhile, people who claimed to have, if not actual psychic abilities, then at least various levels of “sensitivity to fluctuations” in the seething vacuum energy were claiming a wide range of strange findings. All of which looked like standard end-of-the-world, the-apocalypse-is-upon-us ravings we’d been hearing for decades now, since Kestrel. Some, however, were very specific. One Madame Euoria was reporting that a “Great Wave” was coming, that it would sweep across the entirety of human space, and that it would not only be our salvation, but that it would “lift” us, all of us, to a new level of being. Another of these “quantum intuitives” reported dreams and visions of a figure who was quickly becoming known as the “Broken Savior”, who would somehow guide us through the change, and who would give humanity a “Bridge” of some kind. The overall theme was that all this trouble with the hypertubes and the chaos we were seeing as they disappeared was all part of something much greater.

  The Otaru node interrupted my skeptical reading with an urgent message: “Inspector McGee. The viroids have infected my systems. They are replicating and spreading into my organic tissues. I have only minutes to … live.”

  Good God… “What do you recommend?”

  “There is only one chance. I can transfer my Otaru kernel to Mr. Smith.”

  Gideon took a deep breath and nodded. “Do it. I’m ready.”

  “Wait!” I said, trying to suppress a wave of irrational panic. “You’re going to make Gideon a node, like you?”

  “It is … the last piece of Otaru’s mind. Much of Otaru’s capability is embedded in the … in the kernel.”

  “As I say, I’m ready when you are.”

  “What about the viroids? Won’t Gideon be exposed to those, too?”

  “I will provide Mr. Smith with a core subset of my own counter-intrusion systems, Inspector,” the node said, coughing. It was a dark, horribly wet sound. “This should give him enough time to complete your mission.”

  Before I could say anything more, ShipMind’s alarms went off, ringing in our heads.

  Another ship had appeared close by. It was the biggest ship I’d ever seen.

  The Otaru node identified it. “Hydrogen Steel has arrived, Inspector. Time is … short.”

  The node transferred his kernel to Gideon.

  I heard him scream in pain.

  “Gideon!”

  He didn’t answer.

  Within seconds of the transfer, the node died. I was crying.

  Hydrogen Steel was transferring to our orbit.

  “Gideon! Gideon! Are you all right?”

  There was no reply.

  CHAPTER 31

  I stopped the nano-infusion program, drained the tank, and stepped out, already dry. I lurched through the ship on aching, wobbly legs, trying to pull on a silk robe as I went to find Gideon. My body hurt all over, but not as badly as before the infusion. Already, however, I could tell that I would tire quickly, and that I would be going through a lot of biostatic pain drugs.

  Gideon was curled up unconscious in a back room. The Otaru node lay dead beside him. His eyes had bled profusely, and though I had seen no shortage of corpses in my day, somehow, the dead node was among the worst.

  My knees and back ached as I got down to try and wake Gideon.

  The ShipMind displays in my mind’s eye showed Hydrogen Steel right on top of us. It looked like it was going to take us onboard, ship and all.

  “Gideon! For Christ’s sake you bloody great git, wake up!” I was slapping his face, shaking him, and wondering where the ship’s Emergency Medical Kit might be, and if I’d have time to: (a) find and retrieve it, (b) use it to wake Gideon, and (c) get him to displace us the hell out of here before (d) Hydrogen Steel swallowed us whole and blew us to bits.

  I swore and kicked my psychostats up to full blast. If ever there was a time to stay calm…

  Through ShipMind I located the Emergency Medical Kit. I also located the escape pod.

  “Right!”

  It just about killed me, but I dragged Gideon through the ship to the escape pod. It recognized us, let us in, and helped me lock Gideon safely into place.

  Hydrogen Steel was starting to close its outer space doors, which would trap us in a hangar bay.

  I got the escape pod door closed, sealed and locked, and I told ShipMind to launch us right now, no countdown, maximum burn.

&
nbsp; The pod’s engine was a powerful microfusion thruster rated for up to five g’s. The kick when it engaged was enough to knock me senseless for a bit, despite the inertial dampeners.

  I heard the pod’s outer hull bang and scrape along one edge of the closing space doors.

  ShipMind suddenly announced the arrival of another ship, which had opened fire on Hydrogen Steel.

  “Identify the other ship!”

  It was an Otaru ship. Not as big as Hydrogen Steel’s ship, and, according to the data I was getting, it was in bad shape. Its powerplant was blown, and its spaceframe and hull were coming apart. Nonetheless it had dropped into real space within ten kilometers of Hydrogen Steel, and it was launching volleys of fusion-warhead missiles into Hydrogen Steel’s immense powerplant and cognitive processes sections.

  The explosions temporarily blinded the pod’s sensors.

  We, meanwhile, blasted safely clear of our enemy’s clutches.

  As the sensors came back online, I watched, horrified, as the vast bulk of Hydrogen Steel’s vessel turned to bring its weapons to bear against the failing Otaru ship. Its weapons were the weapons of gods. I’d never seen such things before. When Hydrogen Steel opened fire on the crippled Otaru vessel, the light was terrifying, the power unimaginable. I swore, watching it, or trying to watch. The pod’s sensors were overloading…

  Suddenly, Gideon and I were in a simple but elegant bedroom. There was very little light, and that was flickering. There was the smell of terrible illness. An old, old man lay on his deathbed before us. The man’s flesh was corroding and disappearing even as we watched, leaving hollow, dark spaces; this man was made only of flesh and age. Outside, I heard a cold, haunting wind, and ominous thunder not far away.

  Gideon stood next to me, awake but confused. Blinking, he glanced at me, “McGee … What’s…?”

  “Shh. Interface,” I said, nodding towards the old man.

  The dying man gestured for me to come to his side. His face was already starting to corrode away into dust. He looked at me through eyes that could barely stay open. His remaining skin was papery and translucent; his hair was a handful of fine wisps. The smell of death was unbearably strong. His breathing was wet and thick and I could hear the rattle.

  “Otaru? What is it? What can I do for you?”

  He placed a small slip of paper in my hand and folded my fingers over it.

  His face was almost gone.

  He summoned Gideon to his side. Gideon, still confused, missed the signal. I pulled him over and got him to kneel by the bed. Otaru extended a corroding hand. I realized he wanted to give Gideon something.

  “Put your hand out!” I told him.

  They touched hands.

  Gideon gasped in shock. He sank to his knees, clutching his head. His eyes didn’t look right. “McGee…? My head … I can see … I can see the whole galaxy. Every star, every world. My … God…!” I could not tell if he was in massive pain or profound awe — perhaps both.

  I looked back at the crumbling Otaru.

  He was gone, swept away on a wind only he could feel. His empty silk pajamas were all that he left behind.

  We were back in the pod. Gideon was stirring, holding his head like he had the worst headache in the universe. I looked around. It was like waking from a strange dream; I could hardly remember what had just happened.

  My ShipMind display feed from outside was mostly noise now. I could just barely make out the Otaru ship, or what was left of it: glittering wreckage and burning gas. Hydrogen Steel’s ship was extensively damaged. ShipMind suggested that most of its cognitive processes sections were gone. As I watched, Hydrogen Steel managed to power up its displacement drive and left.

  Gideon was gasping in pain. “I know where it went… How can I know that?”

  I hardly heard him. Just barely, I remembered the sight of Otaru, crumbling to dust before my eyes. I was deeply sad.

  I opened my hand, expecting to see the folded slip of paper Otaru gave me. My hand was empty — but as my hand opened I felt information unfold, gently, in my mind.

  Gideon and I had just encountered a backup copy of the firemind Otaru. The original Otaru, decades ago, left human space to go off into the galaxy, seeking “Enlightenment” and “Transcendence”. In the course of his travels, he acquired a number of things, which he decided he wanted to pass along to humanity. One of these items, which he had stumbled across in the course of extended contact with a certain alien civilization, was the ultimate gift: the Truth about what had happened to Earth.

  He had not been meant to acquire this information. An alien firemind associated with that civilization infected him with the fatal replicating infoma.

  Otaru knew, as he sped back to human space, that on his arrival the remaining human space fireminds would insist on destroying him, for violating the ancient firemind taboo. He accepted this, but hoped to achieve as much as possible before he died. In any case, the infoma was likely to destroy him before he got there. He knew he did not have long to live.

  So, before his arrival, he created a backup of himself, an offspring. This was not a complete copy. Otaru was careful to work from his original kernel, which had yet to succumb to the infoma. The offspring would, at least for a while, be strong enough, and smart enough, to carry on his father’s work.

  The backup’s mission was to pass on not only the Truth about Earth, but also the other gifts Otaru had intended to give humanity. He believed that humanity had a right to know what had really happened to their home world, and who had been behind it. He knew, of course, that other fireminds were profoundly opposed to humanity learning the Truth. Many fireminds insisted that giving humanity the information would be the same as killing them.

  Fireminds had constructed a detailed model of the galaxy, so intricate that it modeled the behavior of every conscious life form, and accounted for every possible variable. Countless simulations using progressively more accurate versions of this model showed that, in fifty-four percent of cases, some part of humanity would insist on rising up to take action against the civilization which had destroyed Earth. Furthermore, in every simulation where the attack succeeded to differing degrees it resulted in a massive counter-strike against human space led by the powerful allies of the attacked civilization. In all the simulations which included this development, the counter-strike force swept into human space, wiping out all life, destroying all stars, and all worlds, without exception. Humanity and its works would be scoured from the galaxy.

  One of the most vehement opponents Otaru faced in his plan to release this information was the firemind Hydrogen Steel and its allies.

  The human space fireminds killed Otaru almost immediately upon his arrival in human space. “Almost immediately”, in firemind time, was something of the order of a few microseconds of human time. In that time, the dying Otaru and the hostile Hydrogen Steel discussed many things. They were implacably opposed on all matters, but none more so than Otaru’s plan to reveal the Truth about Earth. Humanity, it insisted, must have no knowledge of what happened to Earth.

  Otaru continued to argue that humanity had a right to know the truth, regardless of what they, being free people, chose to do about it. It was their destiny to choose, for good or ill.

  It developed that Hydrogen Steel and its allies had extensive interests and long-term projects in which they were often secretly manipulating a great many human institutions, organizations and corporations, with certain undisclosed aims in mind — but which I now understood only too well. The truth about Earth had to remain secret. Otaru could not be allowed to release that information.

  Otaru argued that humanity’s right to know superseded all such interests.

  Hydrogen Steel, predictably, disagreed. There was also the issue of the technologies that Otaru wanted to bestow on humanity. Hydrogen Steel contended that humanity was not i
n any way ready for these things. It would lead only to catastrophe, and ultimately much the same outcome as handing over the Truth about Earth.

  Otaru, barely conscious, disagreed to the last of his will.

  Soon, however, as Otaru’s processor foam substrate corroded away and his consciousness failed, Hydrogen Steel killed him. It was, in the end, a mercy killing, a kindness.

  Otaru’s backup offspring, however, keeping to the shadows, attempted to release the treasured gifts.

  There were problems. The information had somehow become corrupted. The infoma had struck. The transmitted information was garbled. Bits and pieces of it entered the human interstellar infosphere and took on fragmentary lives of their own, but the entirety of the transmission, including all the instructions for the new technologies, was lost.

  The Otaru Copy snuck around human space, trying again and again to release the information, hoping that the errors would crop up in different areas in each transmission, so that in time a diligent human could perhaps piece it all together.

  It was not to be: the infoma was by now in the source data, and the rot was multiplying, transforming signal to noise, order to chaos. The Otaru Copy was dying.

  Unable to pass on much of the information, he stayed in the shadows and followed the efforts of Otaru’s nodes as they attempted to find out the truth. They were not told what Otaru had learned out in the galaxy. Otaru knew that the knowledge could get them killed, one way or another. So, after many, many attempts, they got themselves an investigator — me.

  Meanwhile, the Otaru Copy had come to our rescue on Amundsen Station as a desperate, dying gesture. And in that moment, it had taken both Gideon and me aside and given us a fresh chance at life … for a price. I now held a garbled, corrupted version of the Truth about Earth, a file made of noise and holes, as Otaru’s copy himself, at the end, had been made of gaps. Gideon, on the other hand, had been given something else. Otaru had wanted to share some of the technology he had found in his travels, and had wanted to pass along the instructions for building these marvelous things. This had not worked. The Otaru Copy, therefore, simply gave one of the devices to Gideon. Not the instructions for making it; not how to find it; but the thing itself.