Vacuum Diagrams

by Stephen Baxter

  "Rodi, come to terms with your doubts. Humanity is large: scattered, diverse. You found the Moon people discouraging. Well, they have found their own peace. That is not a threat to the validity of our crusade."

  Another table drifted by. A young couple whispered into each other's mouths. Rodi watched them absently, thinking of his parents. Both of them worked in the Ark's biotech tanks. He recalled their pride when he was selected for the seminary, and then for the missionary cohort...

  Gren was smiling again. "Anyway, you haven't long to brood before you go out again."

  Rodi looked up, startled. "You still think I'm suitable?"

  "Of course. Do we want ignorant fanatics? We want young people who can think, boy.

  "Now. There's a neutron star, not far from here. Spinning very fast... we've picked up a signal from its surface."

  Rodi stared. "A human signal?"

  Gren laughed kindly. "Well, of course a human signal. Why else would we send you?"

  Rodi finished his drink and pushed the globe back into the table. "I guess I'd better find Thet..."

  Gren laid a warm hand on his arm. "Rodi, this time you're on your own. Go and get some sleep; you've a few hours to spare—"

  The flitter seemed empty without Thet.

  The Spline's orifice dilated and Rodi returned to hyperspace. He began to thread his way out of the Exaltation, keeping his breath carefully level.

  A Virtual sparkled into existence; Thet grinned. "Going solo this time, kid? I just called to wish you luck." Rodi thanked her. "Listen, Rodi... don't let me get you down. I rag everybody, and my opinions are my own. Right? And you did okay, down there on the Moon. Be safe." She winked at him and the Virtual dissipated.

  Feeling warmer, Rodi dropped into three-space.

  The neutron star was one of a binary pair. It was the remnant of a blue-white giant, once so bright it must have made its companion star cast a shadow. Perhaps there had been planets.

  The giant had exploded.

  Planets evaporated like dew and layers of the companion star blasted away. The giant's remnant collapsed into a wizened, spinning cinder as massive as Earth's sun but barely ten miles across.

  The new neutron star dragged down material from its companion and rotated ever faster. The spin deformed it until at last it was virtually a disc, its rim moving at a third the speed of light. Spin effects there canceled out the star's ferocious gravity and a layer of normal matter began to accrete...

  A human ship had blundered here, scarred by some forgotten war; Rodi found a battered wreck in close orbit around the neutron star. The crew had no way back to hyperspace and no way to call for help.

  And in this dismal system there had been only one place that could conceivably sustain human life...

  In Rodi's monitors the neutron star was a plate of red-hot charcoal. A point on the rim was emitting green laser light, picking out a message in something called Morse code. The message was one word of ancient English. "Mayday. Mayday..."

  Rodi set up a reply, in the same old tongue and code. "I represent the Exaltation of the Integrality. What is mayday?"

  The reply came a day later.

  "Apologies are offered for the delay. It took time to locate the Comms Officer. I am the Comms Officer. What do you want?"

  "My name is Rodi. I have traveled here in an Exaltation of Arks. I have brought you good news of the Integrality—"

  "Are you human?"

  "Yes, of course. How long have you been stranded?"

  "Stranded where?"

  Rodi pulled at his chin. "Would you like to hear of events in the galaxies? Of the wars with the Xeelee?"

  "What are galaxies? — Cancel question. Please understand that this is the first time the Comms System has evoked a reply—"

  "Then why have you maintained it?"

  "Because we always have. The role of Comms Officer is handed from mother to daughter. We know we came from somewhere else. The Comms System is the only link with this other place, our origin. How could we abandon it? Are you in this other place?"

  "Yes. You are not alone."

  "How reassuring."

  Rodi raised an eyebrow. Sarcasm? "Please describe your world."

  "What world?"

  It took some time to achieve a common understanding.

  The stranded crew had observed the layer of soupy liquid at the star rim. The liquid was full of complex molecules, left over from the supernova's fusion fury.

  It was their only hope.

  With astonishing audacity they had terraformed the ring-shaped sea. Then they began to mold their own unborn children.

  Their descendants swam like fish in a dull red toroidal ocean, chattering English. They didn't need hands or tools; only the old Comms System had been left for them, lasing its message to the skies. Rodi imagined the Comms Officer tapping a broad, unwearing key with his mouth or tongue.

  Rodi sent down a small, sturdy probe. It was a passing novelty among the fish-folk. Rodi wondered if they thought he was swimming somewhere inside.

  There was a death among the fish-folk. A corpse fell from a school of wailing relatives and settled slowly to the star's glowing surface.

  Rodi's probe took a tissue sample from the corpse.

  The fish-folk were beyond the reach of the glotto-chronology dating technique. Rodi turned to genetic analysis. Two groups on Earth will show divergence of genetic structure at a rate of one percent every five million years.

  Rodi found that the fish-folk had swum their ocean for fifty thousand years.

  That appalled him. How long had this damn Xeelee war dragged on? How many human lives had been wasted?

  The fish-folk weren't too impressed by the Integrality.

  "All mankind is joined in freedom," said Rodi. "The worlds in home space are joined by inseparability links into a neural network; decisions flow through the net and reflect the wills of all, not just one person or one group..."

  And so on.

  The Comms Officer was silent for a long time. Then: "What you say means little to us."

  "Your world is unchanging. You are isolated. You are cut out of the great events which shape the greater human history."

  "But great events mark our lives," said the Comms Officer, and Rodi wondered if he had given offense. "Our convocations, for instance. There are places where we swim in concert and cause the ocean to sing. We did this not long ago."

  That puzzled Rodi. It sounded like a starquake, a sudden collapse of the crust; that would make the whole star ring like a bell.

  Could they cause a starquake?

  Perhaps they had some way of manipulating the star's ferocious magnetic field. And after all, a quake had disrupted the Exaltation inseparability net not long ago.

  After a fortnight Rodi took his leave of his friend.

  "Wait," the Comms Officer said unexpectedly. "I have a message to give you." And he transmitted: "Our grand Foe, / Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy / Sole reigning holds the tyranny of heaven."

  "What does it mean?" asked Rodi.

  "Unknown."

  "Then why do you send it?"

  "Every Comms Officer is taught to send it."

  "Why?"

  "What is 'heaven'?"

  "Unknown."

  Rodi thought of the rhyme the Moon children had taught Thet. To wage by force or guile eternal war / Irreconcilable to our grand Foe, / Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy...

  The pieces fit together, he realized, astonished.

  He transmitted his conclusion to Holism Ark for analysis.

  Rodi went through the motions of lifting the flitter back to hyperspace, his thoughts clouded.

  Once more his mission hadn't unfolded as he'd been taught to expect.

  The humans in this region had been forced to find their own ways to come to terms with the events that had stranded them. If they hadn't they couldn't have survived. So — why did they need the Integrality? — or a junior missionary like himself?


  Was the Integrality's crusade meaningless?...

  The Exaltation's formation had changed.

  His speculations driven from his mind, he stared at his monitors. Around Holism Ark the fleet's symmetrical pattern had been distorted into a wedge; at the tip the Arks' fleshy walls were almost touching. Flitters scurried between the Arks; hundreds of closed-beam inseparability net messages radiated away from Holism Ark.

  What was happening?

  He pushed into Holism Ark. The maintenance bay was deserted. He flew through an axis filled with a harsh light. People rushed past, wings fluttering.

  Men and women came along the axis shoving a cannon-like piece of equipment. Rodi recognized a machine-shop heavy-duty laser. He had to press against the wall to allow the team to pass. Their eyes passed blankly over him.

  Rodi noticed a fist-sized, fleshy lump on the back of the neck of the nearest man, at the top of his spine.

  The freefall common room was unrecognizable. Rodi clung to a wall and stared around. The floating tables were being cleared away; he saw a group of children shooed through the commotion.

  There were more bulges on the spinal columns of the crew. Even the children were affected. Some sort of sickness?

  A hundred crewmen worked to bolt together a huge, cubical lattice. Eventually, Rodi realized, it would fill the common room. Medical devices and supplies were strapped to struts. Rough hands pushed a man-sized bundle of blankets into the lattice. Then another, and a third...

  Crew members in sterile masks unwrapped the bundles.

  Suddenly Rodi saw it.

  This was a hospital. It was being built in the soft heart of the Ark — the most protected place in case of attack. And towards the hull they were taking heavy-duty lasers — to use as weapons?

  Holism Ark was preparing for war.

  Rodi's head pounded and there was a metallic taste at the back of his throat.

  Thet came sweeping across the bustling space, towing a small package of clothes.

  Rodi pushed away from the wall and grabbed her arm.

  "The philosopher returns," Thet said, grinning. Her eyes sparkled and her face was flushed.

  There was a growth at the top of her spine.

  "Thet... what's happening?"

  "I'm going to Unity Ark. As a Battle Captain. Isn't it fantastic?"

  "Battle? Against who?"

  "The Xeelee. Who else? Why do you think we came all this way?"

  Rodi tightened his grip on her upper arm. "We came for the Integrality. Remember? We came to remove war, not to wage it."

  She laughed in his face, her mouth wide. "That's yesterday, Rodi. It's all gone. And you know who we have to thank? You. Isn't that ironic?" With fingers like steel she prised open his hand and kicked away.

  "Where's Gren?"

  "In the sanatorium," she called back. "And, Rodi... that's your fault too."

  Rodi hung there for long minutes. Then he turned to the makeshift hospital.

  Gren lay in a honeycomb of suffering people. Bandaging swathed his neck.

  Rodi touched the shrunken face. Gren's eyes flickered open. His face creased as he recognized Rodi. He whispered: "...our grand Foe, / Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy / Sole reigning holds the tyranny of heaven!" He grimaced. "You have to admire the planning. Over thousands of centuries, even as humans died before the Xeelee, they hid those words among thousands of fragments of verse, and built an epic deception..."

  "Please," Rodi said miserably, "I don't understand any of this."

  Gren stirred. "I'm sorry, Rodi. The truth is that the Integrality is a fraud, an epic deception spanning millennia. Our mission was a lie which has allowed this huge armada to penetrate Xeelee space, its true purpose unknown even to generations of crew.

  "The reassembled poetry was the key, you see. Hearing those words ignited something in each of us — something locked in the genetic code that defines us. We began to suffer explosive growths—"

  Rodi fingered his own smooth neck.

  "You're a lucky one," Gren whispered. "It doesn't always work. A tenth of us are unaffected. Perhaps two-thirds have been — programmed. Like Thet. And the rest of us are dying."

  Rodi turned away.

  Gren said, "No, Rodi. Hear the rest. The growths are nervous tissue. They contain information... it's like a false memory. And an obsession. I walked to a wall and touched tiles in a certain way; control panels unfolded — and I knew how to work weapons mounted in the hull... The Exaltation is a deception, the message of the Integrality a way to enable a war fleet to approach the Ring.

  "Your poetry is being spread from Holism by closed inseparability net. Not all the Exaltation has yet been infected. But... but finally..." His rheumy eyes fluttered closed.

  Rodi shook frail shoulders. "Gren... tell me what to do. We've got to stop this—"

  Gren's mouth gaped, spittle looping between his lips.

  Holism Ark had become an alien place. Rodi watched weapons pods erupting from walls still coated with uplifting Integrality slogans.

  He thought of trying to find his parents. He envisaged their grisly welcome, overlaid with spinal knots and blank, driven faces.

  He shuddered and swam towards the flitter hangars. There was no way he could influence events here. Perhaps if he made his way to the battle site...

  Then what?

  He readied the flitter for launch, trying to lose himself in activity.

  He skimmed the surface of the Ark; the blisters which had puzzled him earlier had now opened up to reveal the snouts of weapons and guidance sensors.

  He pulled away. Much of the Exaltation, he saw, was still unaffected and held its formation. He flew to the tip of the flying wedge.

  For the first time in three thousand years, the great Arks were leaving hyperspace.

  His heart heavy, he swept ahead of the fleet and dropped into three-space.

  He was in a mist of blue-stained stars. A torus glowed: Bolder's Ring, still hundreds of light years away but already spanning the sky.

  He pushed towards the Ring.

  The flitter passed through the last veil of crushed matter and entered the clear space at the bottom of the Ring's gravity well... and for a few seconds, despite everything, Rodi's breath grew short with wonder.

  The Ring, a tangle of cosmic string, glittered as it rotated. There was a milky place at its very center, a hole ripped in the fabric of space by that monstrous, whirling mass.

  Xeelee were everywhere.

  Ships miles wide swept over the artifact's sparkling planes, endlessly constructing and shaping. Rodi watched a horde of craft using cherry-red beams to herd a star, an orange giant, into a soft, slow collision with the Ring. The star's structure was breaking up as cosmic string ripped into its flank —

  A dozen flesh-pale spheres hurtled over Rodi's head, spitting fire.

  They were Spline: the warships of the Integrality. They tore towards the star drovers and battle was joined.

  At first the humans had the advantage of surprise. The ponderous Xeelee construction ships scattered in confusion. One of them was caught in the cross-fire of two Arks; Rodi could see its structure melt and smolder. More human ships dropped out of hyperspace and the battle spread.

  But now a Spline ship splashed open. Rodi watched people wriggle in vacuum, soaked by spurts of Spline blood.

  A Xeelee nightfighter covered the wreck with wings a hundred miles wide.

  There were nightfighters all around the battle site. Fire bit into the sides of the laboring Spline.

  It was a massacre.

  Rodi could not bear to watch. Each Ark was a world, millennia old, carrying families... He increased the scale of his monitors, turned the battle into a game of toys.

  But now the Xeelee fighters pulled away. They folded their wings and hovered outside the mist of debris, almost aloof.

  The human ships tore into the defenseless construction vessels. Out of control, the orange star splashed against the Ring surface.

/>   The Arks withdrew to hyperspace. One of them whirled as if in jubilation, spitting fire in all directions. Wrecks sailed into clumsy orbits around the Ring.

  The Xeelee fighters departed, wings shimmering.

  Rodi closed his eyes.

  This had been no triumph for the humans. The Xeelee had given them a meaningless victory; they had simply not wished to slaughter.

  Couldn't the human crews see that? Would this happen again and again until every Ark was disabled, every human life lost?

  No. He couldn't let it occur. And, he began to realize, there was a way he could prevent it.

  He opened his eyes, rubbed his face, and lifted the flitter to hyperspace.

  The neutron star scraped the surface of its companion, just as it had in that dream time before the metamorphosis. "Integrality for the Comms Officer—"

  "Greetings, Rodi from the Integrality."

  Rodi, in broken bits of old English, described the futile battle.

  The Comms Officer mulled it over. "I understand little... only that people are dying for a foolish purpose."

  "But with your help, I can avert many deaths."

  "How?"

  "Not all the Exaltation has been... contaminated. The virus of words is spreading via inseparability net links. If we break those links, the spread will stop."

  "And how can we disrupt this inseparability net?"

  "Cause a starquake."

  He had to expand, to explain what he meant.

  The Comms Officer hesitated. "Rodi, there are two things you should know. We cause these events for specific religious and sexual reasons. They are not — a sport. Second, many of us will lose our lives."

  "I know what I'm asking."

  A monitor flashed: another craft had dropped out of hyperspace near him. A Virtual tank filled up with a grinning face.

  The craft was Unity Ark. The face was Thet's.

  She said, "They told me your flitter was gone. It wasn't hard to work out where you'd be. You're planning sabotage, aren't you?"

  Rodi stared at her.

  "Are we still in contact, Rodi of the Integrality?"

  "Yes, Comms Officer..."

  "Rodi, you have one minute to begin your approach to Unity. After that we open fire. Do you understand?"