Vacuum Diagrams

by Stephen Baxter

  But now wasn't the time; there was still work to do. Pallis was already bellowing at Gover. Rees got to his feet, wrapping his toes in the foliage like a regular woodsman.

  Pallis joined him, and they labored at a fire bowl together.

  "Rees, you can't have had any real idea what the Raft is like. So... why did you do it? What were you running from?"

  Rees considered the question. "I wasn't running from anything, pilot. The mine is a tough place, but it was my home. No. I left to find the answer."

  "The answer? To what?"

  "To why the Nebula is dying."

  Pallis studied the serious young miner and felt a chill settle on his spine.

  How much education did the average miner get? Pallis doubted Rees was even literate. As soon as a child was strong enough he or she was forced into the foundry or down to the crushing surface of the iron star, to begin a life of muscle-sapping toil...

  And the Belt's children were forced there by the economics of the Nebula, he reminded himself harshly; economics which he — Pallis — helped to keep in place.

  He shook his head, troubled. Pallis had never accepted the theory, common on the Raft, that the miners were a species of sub-human, fit only for the toil they endured. What was the life span of the miners? Thirty thousand shifts? Less, maybe half of Pallis's own age already?

  What a fine woodsman Rees would make... or, he admitted ruefully, maybe a better Scientist.

  A vague plan began to form in his mind.

  Maybe Pallis could help Rees find a place on the Raft.

  It wouldn't be easy. Rees would face a lifetime of hostility from the likes of Gover. And the Raft was no bed of flowers and leaves; its economy, too, had declined with the slow choking of the Nebula.

  But Rees deserved a chance. And Rees was a smart kid. Maybe, Pallis mused, just maybe he might actually find some answers. Was it possible?

  "Now, then, miner," Pallis said briskly, "we've got a tree to fly. Let's get the bowls brimming; I want a canopy up there so thick I could walk about on it. All right?"

  The tree had passed the highest layer of the forest. The Raft turned from a landscape into an island in the air, crowned by a mass of shifting foliage. The sky above Rees seemed darker than usual, so that he felt he was suspended at the very edge of the Nebula, looking down over the mists surrounding the Nebula's Core.

  And in all that universe of air the only sign of humanity was the Raft, a scrap of metal suspended in miles of air.

  His heart lifted, bursting with the exhilaration of a thousand questions.

  "Did Rees find his answers?"

  Eve just smiled, and the images, of the glowing Nebula and its mile-wide stars, faded from my view, receding into a scrap of crimson light, a spark lost in the greater blaze of human history...[4]

  The assaults continued, waves of them, generations of humans battering against the great Xeelee defenses... and leaving shards of humanity stranded in the great spaces around the Xeelee Prime Radiant.

  At last, even those broken shards became weapons of war.

  The Tyranny of Heaven

  A.D. 171,257

  We may with more successful hope resolve

  To wage by force or guile eternal war

  Irreconcilable to our grand Foe,

  Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy

  Sole reigning holds the tyranny of heaven...

  Paradise Lost, John Milton

  RODI CLIMBED THROUGH THE HATCH and into the flitter. The craft was a box the size of a small room. He threaded his way through the interior.

  There was a girl in one of the pilot seats. She turned. Tall and muscular, she wasn't much older than Rodi's twenty years.

  Rodi tripped over a locker.

  The girl's eyes glittered with amusement. "Take it easy. You're Rodi. Right? I'm Thet."

  His face hot, Rodi took the seat beside her. "Glad to meet you." The instrument panel before him looked utterly alien.

  "Well, buckle in." Thet punched fat buttons. Monitors showed muscles contracting in the Ark's hull. "And don't be so nervous."

  "I'm not."

  "Of course you are. I never understand why. You've taken flitters outside the Ark before, haven't you?"

  "Sure." He tried not to sound defensive. "On inter-Ark hops. But this is my first mission drop — my first time out of hyperspace. It's a little different."

  She raised fine eyebrows. "We didn't evolve in hyperspace."

  "Maybe. But it's all I know—"

  An orifice in the hull opened and exploded at them; the flitter surged into hyperspace. It was like being born.

  A Virtual image of the Ark swam into their monitors. Holism Ark was a Spline ship: a rolling, fleshy sphere encrusted with blisters. It was a living being, Rodi mused, and it looked like it.

  He wondered briefly what those blisters on the hull were. They couldn't be seen from within the Ark...

  The flitter receded rapidly. Hyperspace smeared the Ark's image.

  Now more Arks came into view. The flitter skirted islands of huge flesh as it worked its way through the fleet.

  At last the flitter surged into clear hyperspace; Thet swung the flitter about.

  Holism Ark was lost in a blurred wall of ten thousand Arks that cut the Universe in half. This was the Exaltation of the Integrality. Rodi imagined he could hear a thrumming as the great armada forged onwards; flitters skimmed between the huge hulls and rained into three-space.

  "We're privileged to see this," Rodi said.

  "Definitely," said Thet laconically. "A sight that hasn't changed for three thousand years." She snapped the flitter away; the Exaltation became a blur in the distance. Her shaven head gleamed in the cabin lights. "I'll tell you how we're privileged. After a hundred generations it's us who are around as the Exaltation reaches Bolder's Ring, the true Prime Radiant of the Xeelee. And so the sky here is full of lost human colonies. Bits of ancient, failed assaults. Instead of a dozen missionary drops a century we're getting a hundred a year. Which is why they're pressing almost anybody into service."

  "Thanks," he said drily.

  She grinned, showing teeth. "So I'm your tutor on your first drop. And I'm not what you expected. Am I?"

  Rodi said nothing.

  "Look — I'm resourceful, a good pilot. I'm no great thinker, okay?... but you're different. Top marks in the seminary, Gren tells me. You should soon surpass me. And with all that understanding you should have no fear. The Integrality says that the death of an individual is unimportant."

  "Yes." That was a child's precept; he clutched the thought and felt his anxiety recede.

  "And you do believe in the Integrality. Don't you?" Her voice was sly.

  Was she mocking him? "Of course. Don't you?"

  She didn't reply. She stabbed at the control panel. The flitter popped out of hyperspace.

  Stars exploded around him. Half of them were colored blue.

  He gasped. Thet laughed.

  It's a simulation, he told himself. Just another sim.

  "I'm sorry," he said.

  Thet watched with amused contempt. "Get your bearings."

  The stars blurred together. Behind him they were tinged china blue. Ahead of him they formed a mist that hid... something, a hint of a torus shape—

  "Bolder's Ring is ahead," he breathed.

  "How do you know?"

  Because that was the way everything was falling.

  Thet said, "We've been space-going for a hundred and fifty millennia, probably. And yet we're still children at the feet of the Xeelee. Makes you sick, doesn't it?"

  Rodi shrugged. "That's why we've been trying to wreck that thing for almost as long. Envy."

  Thet paged through images on her monitor. "Shocking. And of course we of the Integrality are here to put it all right... ha! There's our goal." The screen contained a single spark of chlorophyll green. "Human life... or near enough to show up. A worldful of straying lambs. Right, Rodi?" And she drove the flitter through the crowd
of stars.

  On Holism Ark there were sim rooms of Earth. This little world, Rodi decided, was like a folded-up bit of Earth. They swept over oceans that sparkled in the jostling starlight — and then flew into an impossible dawn.

  It was impossible because there was no sun.

  "It doesn't make sense," Thet murmured. The light was diffusing down from a glowing sky. "Where's that damn sunlight coming from?... And the planet's only a quarter Earth's size, gravity a sixth standard — too low for this thick layer of air..."

  Rodi smiled. The little world was like a toy.

  Thet poked buttons in triumph. "Contact! About time..."

  A Virtual tank filled up with a smiling male face, long and gracefully austere. He spoke; Rodi picked out maybe one word in two. After a few seconds he flicked the translator button mounted in his thumbnail.

  "...this equipment's a little dusty, I'm afraid; we don't get too many visitors. It's only chance I was in the museum when the alarm chimed—"

  "We represent the Exaltation of the Integrality," said Thet formally. "We come from beyond the stars. We are human like yourselves."

  The man laughed; his eyes' folds crinkled. "Thank you, my dear. You're welcome to land and talk to us. But you'll find we're quite sophisticated. Use this signal as a beacon. The name of this area is Tycho..."

  Thet let Rodi pilot the flitter out of orbit. Fifty miles above the surface the little craft shuddered; Rodi's palms grew slick with sweat.

  "That wasn't your fault, surprisingly," Thet said calmly. "We just passed through a kind of membrane. It's — healing — behind us. Now we know how they keep the atmosphere in. And maybe this is where the sunshine comes from. Interesting."

  The Tycho museum perched at the summit of a green-clad mountain. A tall figure waved. The mountain was at the center of a plain which glistened with lakes and trees. The plain was walled by a circle of jagged hills. As they descended the hills dipped over the horizon.

  Rodi landed neatly.

  The air carried the scent of pine. Through the day-lit membrane Rodi could see stars; towards the horizon they were stained blue. He breathed deeply, invigorated.

  Thet whooped. "I love this dinky gravity." She did a neat double back somersault, her long legs flexing.

  Their host walked around the curve of the little museum. He wore a white coverall and he was at least eight feet tall. He smiled. "Welcome," he said. "My name is Darby."

  Thet landed breathlessly and introduced herself and Rodi. "Come to my home," said Darby. "My family will be more than excited to meet you. And you can tell us all about your... integrality."

  Rodi looked around for a transport. There was none.

  Darby said nothing. He held out his hands. Like children, Rodi and Thet took hold.

  Rodi saw Darby's coverall ripple, as if in a sudden breeze.

  The museum, the flitter slid away.

  Rodi looked down. He was flying, as if in a glass elevator. He felt no fear. Hand in hand they soared over the curves of the little world.

  Darby's home was a tentlike, translucent structure; it was at the heart of a light-filled forest. The days were as long as Ark days, adhering to some ancient, common standard. Thet and Rodi spent four days with Darby's family.

  Thet looked out of place in all this domesticity: squat, brusque, embarrassed by kindness. She let Rodi talk to the adults while she sat on the leaf-strewn ground telling Integrality parables to Darby's two children. Each child towered over Thet. Their earnestness made Rodi smile.

  On the final day Darby took Rodi by the hand. "Come with me. I'd like to show you a little more of our world."

  They flew soundlessly. Houseboats floated on circular oceans; clumps of dwellings grew by the banks of rivers. Everywhere people waved at them. "This is a peaceful place, you see, Rodi," Darby said. "There are only a few thousand of us."

  "Yes. And this orderly world has risen from the debris of war... just as the Integrality teaches us to expect. As I've told you, the Integrality is a movement based on the inter-meshing of all things. Local reductions in entropy occur on all scales throughout the Universe, from the growth of a child to the convergence of a galaxy cluster. Order is to be celebrated..."

  Irritation touched Darby's face briefly. He said nothing. Rodi fell silent, faintly embarrassed.

  At a savannah's heart sat a simple dome. "This is a place we call Tranquility," said Darby. "What I'm going to show you is a kind of monument. On seeing this perhaps you'll understand why your sermons are a little out of place here."

  They landed like leaves.

  Rodi peered through the clear dome wall. Boulders littered a patch of bald earth. There was a craft, a spiderlike structure as tall as a man. Gold foil gleamed through years of dust. Its colors faded beyond recognition, a flag lay in the soil.

  "Here is the original surface of the planet, preserved through the terraforming," said Darby. "Airless."

  "The craft looks very old. What is it?"

  "Human, of course. This is one of our first spacecraft. Do you know where you are yet?"

  Rodi turned and met Darby's mild eyes.

  "This is the Moon," Darby said. "The original satellite of Earth. It was used in some ancient assault on the Ring... abandoned here, millions of light years from home, and terraformed by the handful of survivors." He smiled. "Rodi, every glance at the night sky tells us where we are and how we got here. We live surrounded by the rubble of the past, the foolish sacrifices of war.

  "We have had to come to terms with this, you see. We have made our peace with the Universe. Perhaps your Integrality has something to learn from us."

  Rodi stared for long minutes at the ancient craft. Then Darby took his arm. "I'll take you back to your flitter. Your companion is already waiting for you."

  Hand in hand, they flew to the grass-coated walls of Tycho Crater.

  The flitter soared through hyperspace.

  "Those damn kids taught me a song," Thet said. She recited: "We may with more successful hope resolve / To wage by force or guile eternal war / Irreconcilable to our grand Foe... That's all there was."

  Rodi frowned. "Strange sort of kids' song."

  "Sounds very old, doesn't it? The kids say they learn it from older children, and so it's passed on." Punching the controls briskly, she said, "Well, that's your first drop. Wasn't so bad, was it? Next one solo, maybe."

  Sunk in depression, Rodi tapped at the data desk built into his thumbnail. "What do you know about glotto-chronology?"

  Thet snorted. "What do you think?"

  "It's one of our standard dating mechanisms. Starting from a common root, the languages of two human groups will diverge by a fifth every thousand years." Tiny numbers flickered over his nail. "About half of Darby's vocabulary is close to ours. That makes the colony about three thousand years old... This war has endured for millennia."

  "We know that." Thet's brow furrowed as she concentrated on her piloting. "This is actually a bit tricky. The inseparability net is breaking up a little; the guidance beacons are flickering... there are ripples in hyperspace; large mass movements somewhere. A quake on a nearby neutron star?"

  Rodi found himself blurting, "Is it always like that?"

  "What?"

  "Darby..."

  "What did you expect? To convert him?"

  Rodi thought it over. "Yes."

  She laughed at that. She was still laughing as they passed into the warm interior of the Ark.

  Holism Ark was a sphere miles wide. Its human fabric was sustained from huge chambers strung around the equator, where the Ark's spin gave the illusion of gravity. There were industrial zones, biotech tanks, sim rooms, health and exercise facilities. The weightless axis was a tunnel glowing with light. Tiled corridors branched away to riddle the Ark.

  The flitter docked at a pole. Rodi slipped his arms into a set of light wings and swam along the axis. He was due to meet his seminary tutor, Gren, to discuss his voyage, and he tried to lift his mood. He stared around at the bustli
ng life of the Ark: people coasting to and from work, children fluttering stubby wings in some complex game. Rodi felt isolated from it all, as if his senses were clouded by his depression.

  There was a free fall common room at the center of the Ark. Gren met him there, tethered to a floating table. Gren was a round, comfortable man. Over a coffee globe he congratulated Rodi. "I was interested by that bit of doggerel Thet picked up," he said. "Did you know we've found similar fragments before?"

  "Really?" Rodi hung up his wings and fiddled with his table tether.

  "Strange, isn't it? These scattered bits of humanity slavishly maintaining their scraps of verse. We've a data store full of them... But what's it all for?" Gren put on a look of comic puzzlement.

  Rodi drew a coffee globe from the table's dispenser. "Gren, why are the Ark's corridors tiled?"

  Gren sipped his drink and eyed Rodi. He said carefully, "Because it's more comfortable that way."

  "For us, yes. But this Ark is a Spline ship. How must the Spline feel? Once the Spline were free traders. Now we've sanitized this being's guts and built controls into its consciousness. Gren, we preach the wholeness of life, the growth to completeness. Is that a suitable way to treat a fellow creature?"

  "Ah. Your first drop didn't turn out as you expected." He smiled. "You're not the first to react like this."

  Rodi cradled the coffee globe's warmth close to his chest. "Please take me seriously, Gren. Is our philosophy, this great crusade to the Ring, a sham?"

  "You know it isn't. The Integrality is a movement based on centuries of hard human experience. It has quasi-religious elements. Even the words we use — 'seminary,' 'mission' — have the scent of ancient faiths. That's no sham; it's quite deliberate. We want the Integrality to be vibrant enough to replace other faiths... especially man's dark passion to die on a mass scale."

  "War—"

  Gren thumped the table, his round face absurdly serious. "Yes, war. And that's why the resources of planets were spent to send the Exaltation here, to the site of man's greatest and most futile war.