"Does this mean we won't be able to put sensors up?"
"Not for a while. I've managed to stop them digesting the communication block which the optical fibre is connected to."
"How?"
He pointed to the two on the wall. "I shut them down."
"Jesus, have you accessed a control network?"
"No. Schutz and I used a micro SQUID on one of the cybermice to get a more detailed scan of its electronics. Once we'd tapped the databus traffic it was just a question of running standard decryption programmes. I can't tell you how these things work, but I have found some basic command routines. There's a deactivation code which you can datavise to them. I've also got a reactivation code, and some directional codes. The good news is that the xenoc programme language is standardized." He stood and held a communication block up to the ceiling. "This is the deactivation code." A small circle of the ceiling around the block turned dark. "It's only localized, I haven't worked out how to control entire sections yet. We need to trace the circuitry to find an access port."
"Can you turn it back on again?"
"Oh yes." The dark section flared white again. "The codes work for the doors as well; just hold your block over the dimples."
"Be quicker to use the dimples."
"For now, yes."
"I wasn't complaining, Karl. This is an excellent start. What's your next step?"
"I want to access the next level of the cybermice programme architecture. That way I should be able to load recognition patterns in their memory. Once I can do that I'll enter our equipment, and they should leave it alone. But that's going to take a long time; Lady Mac isn't exactly heavily stocked with equipment for this kind of work. Of course, once I do get deeper into their management routines we should be able to learn a lot about their internal systems. From what I can make out the cybermice are built around a molecular synthesizer." He switched on a fission knife, its ten-centimetre blade glowing a pale yellow under the ceiling's glare. It scored a dark smouldering scar in the floor composite.
A cybermouse immediately slipped towards the blemish. This time when the composite softened the charred granules were sucked down, and the small valley closed up.
"Exactly the same thickness and molecular structure as before," Karl datavised. "That's why the ship's interior looks brand new, and everything's still working flawlessly after 13,000 years. The cybermice keep regenerating it. just keep giving them energy and a supply of mass and there's no reason this ship won't last for eternity."
"It's almost a Von Neumann machine, isn't it?"
"Close. I expect a synthesizer this small has limits. After all, if it could reproduce anything, they would have built themselves another starship. But the principle's here, Captain. We can learn and expand on it. Think of the effect a unit like this will have on our manufacturing industry."
Marcus was glad he was in an SII suit, it blocked any give-away facial expressions. Replicator technology would be a true revolution, restructuring every aspect of human society, Adamist and Edenist alike. And revolutions never favoured the old.
I just came here for the money, not to destroy a way of life for 800 star systems. "That's good, Karl. Where did the others go?"
"Down to the third deck. Once we solved the puzzle of the disappearing exoskeletons, they decided it was safe to start exploring again."
"Fair enough, I'll go down and join them."
"I cannot believe you agreed to help them," Antonio stormed. "You of all people. You know how much the cause is depending on us."
Jorge gave him a hollow smile. They were together in his sleeping cubicle, which made it very cramped. But it was one place on the starship he knew for certain no sensors were operational; a block he'd brought with him had made sure of that. "The cause has become dependent on your project. There's a difference."
"What are you talking about?"
"Those detector satellites cost us a million and a half fuseodollars each; and most of that money came from sources who will require repayment no matter what the outcome of our struggle."
"The satellites are a hell of a lot cheaper than antimatter."
"Indeed so. But they are worthless to us unless they find pitchblende."
"We'll find it. Victoria says there are plenty of traces. It's only a question of time before we get a big one."
"Maybe. It was a good idea, Antonio, I'm not criticizing. Fusion bomb components are not easily obtainable to a novice political organization with limited resources. One mistake, and the intelligence agencies would wipe us out. No, old-fashioned fission was a viable alternative. Even if we couldn't process the uranium up to weapons-quality, we can still use it as a lethal large-scale contaminant. As you say, we couldn't lose. Sonora would gain independence, and we would form the first government, with full access to the Treasury. Everyone would be reimbursed for their individual contribution to the liberation."
"So why are we mucking about in a pile of xenoc junk? Just back me up, Jorge, please. Calvert will leave it alone if we both pressure him."
"Because, Antonio, this piece of so-called xenoc junk has changed the rules of the game. In fact we're not even playing the same game any more. Gravity generation, an inexhaustible power supply, molecular synthesis, and if Karl can access the control network he might even find the blueprints to build whatever stardrive they used. Are you aware of the impact such a spectrum of radical technologies will have upon the Confederation when released all together? Entire industries will collapse from overnight obsolescence. There will be an economic depression the like of which we haven't seen since before the invention of the ZTT drive. It will take decades for the human race to return to the kind of stability we enjoy today. We will be richer and stronger because of it; but the transition years, ah ... I would not like to be a citizen in an asteroid settlement that has just blackmailed the founding company into premature independence. Who is going to loan an asteroid such as that the funds to re-equip our industrial stations, eh?"
"I ... I hadn't thought of that."
"Neither has the crew. Except for Calvert. Look at his face next time you talk to him, Antonio. He knows, he has reasoned it out, and he's seen the end of his captaincy and freedom. The rest of them are lost amid their dreams of exorbitant wealth."
"So what do we do?"
Jorge clamped a hand on Antonio's shoulder. "Fate has smiled on us, Antonio. This was registered as a joint venture flight. No matter we were looking for something different. By law, we are entitled to an equal share of the xenoc technology. We are already trillionaires, my friend. When we get home we can buy Sonora asteroid; Holy Mother, we can buy the entire Lagrange cluster."
Antonio managed a smile, which didn't quite correspond with the dew of sweat on his forehead. "Okay, Jorge. Hell, you're right. We don't have to worry about anything any more. But..”
"Now what?"
"I know we can pay off the loan on the satellites, but what about the Crusade council? They won't like this. They might-"
"There's no cause for alarm. The council will never trouble us again. I maintain that I am right about the disaster which destroyed the xenoc ship. It didn't have an accident. That is a warship, Antonio. And you know what that means, don't you? Somewhere on board there will be weapons just as advanced and as powerful as the rest of its technology."
It was Wai's third trip over to the xenoc ship. None of them spent more than two hours at a time inside. The gravity field made every muscle ache, walking round was like being put on a crash exercise regimen.
Schutz and Karl were still busy by the airlock, probing the circuitry of the cybermice, and decrypting more of their programming. It was probably the most promising line of research; once they could use the xenoc programme language they should be able to extract any answer they wanted from the ship's controlling network. Assuming there was one. Wai was convinced there would be. The number of systems operating-life-support, power, gravity-had to mean some basic management integration system was functional.
In the meantime there was the rest of the structure to explore. She had a layout file stored in her neural nanonics, updated by the others every time they came back from an excursion. At the blunt end of the wedge there could be anything up to 40 decks, if the spacing was standard. Nobody had gone down to the bottom yet. There were some areas which had no obvious entrance- presumably engineering compartments, or storage tanks. Marcus had the ;,ams tracing the main power lines with magnetic sensors, trying to locate the generator.
Wai plodded after Roman as he followed a cable running down the centre of a corridor on the eighth deck.
"It's got so many secondary feeds it looks like a fisbbone," he complained. They paused at a junction with five branches, and he swept the block round. "This way." He started off down one of the new corridors.
"We're heading towards stairwell five," she told him, as the layout file scrolled through her skull.
There were more cybermice than usual on deck eight; over 30 were currently pursuing her and Roman, creating strong ripples in the composite floor and walls. Wai had noticed that the deeper she went into the ship the more of them there seemed to be. Although after her second trip she'd completely ignored them. She wasn't paying a lot of attention to the compartments leading off from the corridors, either. It wasn't that they were all the same, rather that they were all similarly empty.
They reached the stairwell, and Roman stepped inside. "It's going down," he datavised.
"Great, that means we've got another level to climb up when we're finished."
Not that going down these stairs was easy, she acknowledged charily. If only they could find some kind of variable gravity chute. Perhaps they'd all been positioned in the part of the ship that was destroyed.
"You know, I think Marcus might have been right about the dish being an emergency beacon," she datavised. "I can't think of any other reason for it being built. Believe me, I've tried."
"He always is right. It's bloody annoying, but that's why I fly with him."
"I was against it because of the faith gap."
"Say what?"
"The amount of faith these xenocs must have had in themselves. It's awesome. So different from humans. Think about it. Even if their homeworld is only 2,000 light years away, that's how long the message is going to take to reach there. Yet they sent it believing someone would still be around to receive it, and more, act on it. Suppose that was us; suppose the Lady Mac had an accident a thousand light years away. Would you think there was any point in sending a lightspeed message to the Confederation, then going into zero-tall to wait for a rescue ship?"
"If their technology can last that long, then I guess their civilization can, too."
"No, our hardware can last for a long time. It's our culture that's fragile, at least compared to theirs. I don't think the Confederation will last a thousand years.
"The Edenists will be here, I expect. So will all the planets, physically if nothing else. Some of their societies will advance, possibly even to a state similar to the Kant; some will revert to barbarism. But there will be somebody left to hear the message and help."
"You're a terrible optimist."
They arrived at the ninth deck, only to find the doorway was sealed over with composite.
"Odd," Ronian datavised. "If there's no corridor or compartment beyond, why put a doorway here at all?"
"Because this was a change made after the accident."
"Could be. But why would they block off an interior section?"
"I've no idea. You want to keep going down?"
"Sure. I'm optimistic enough not to believe in ghosts lurking in the basement."
"I really wish you hadn't said that."
The tenth deck had been sealed off as well. "My legs can take one more level," Wai datavised. "Then I'm going back."
There was a door on deck I I. It was the first one in the ship to be closed.
Wai stuck her fingers in the dimple, and the door dilated. She edged over cautiously, and swept the focus of her collar sensors round. "Holy shit. We'd better fetch Marcus."
Decks nine and ten had simply been removed to make the chamber. Standing on the floor and looking up, Marcus could actually see the outline of the stairwell doorways in the wall above him. By xenoc standards it was a cathedral. There was only one altar, right in the centre. A doughnut of some dull metallic substance, eight metres in diameter with a central aperture five metres across; the air around it was emitting a faint violet glow. It stood on five sableblack arching buttresses, four metres tall.
"The positioning must be significant," Wai datavised. "They built it almost at the centre of the wreck. They wanted to give it as much protection as possible."
"Agreed," Katherine replied. "They obviously considered it important. After a ship has suffered this much damage, you don't expend resources on anything other than critical survival requirements."
"Whatever it is," Schutz reported. "It's using up an awful lot of power." He was walking round it, keeping a respectful distance, wiping a sensor block over the floor as he went, "here's a power cable feeding each of those legs."
"Is it radiating in any spectrum?" Marcus asked.
"Only that light you can see, which spills over into ultraviolet, too. Apart from that, it's inert. But the energy must be going somewhere."
"Okay." Marcus walked up to a buttress, and switched his collar focus to scan the aperture. It was veiled by a grey haze, as if a sheet of fog had solidified across it. When he took another tentative step forward the fluid in his semicircular canals was suddenly affected by a very strange tidal force. His foot began to slip forwards and upwards. He threw himself backwards, and almost stumbled. Jorge and Karl just caught him in time.
"There's no artificial gravity underneath it," he datavised. "But there's some kind of gravity field wrapped around it." He paused. "No, that's not right. It pushed me."
"Pushed?" Katherine hurried to his side. "Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"M God."
"What? Do you know what it is?"
"Possibly. Schutz, bang on to my arm, please."
The cosmonik came forward and took her left arm. Katherine edged forward until she was almost under the lambent doughnut. She stretched up her right arm, holding out a sensor block, and tried to press it against the doughnut. It was as if she was trying to make two identical magnetic poles touch. The block couldn't get to within 20 centimetres of the surface, it kept slithering and sliding through the air. She held it as steady as she could, and datavised it to run an analysis of the doughnut's molecular structure. The results made her back away. "So?" Marcus asked.
"I'm not entirely sure it's solid in any reference frame we understand. That surface could just be a boundary effect. There's no spectroscopic data at all, the sensor couldn't even detect an atomic structure in there, let alone valency bonds."
"You mean it's a ring of energy?"
"Don't hold me to it, but I think that thing could be some kind of exotic matter."
"Exotic in what sense, exactly?" Jorge asked.
"It has a negative energy density. And before you ask, that doesn't mean antigravity. Exotic matter only has one known use, to keep a wormhole open."
"Jesus, that's a wormhole portal?" Marcus asked.
"It must be."
"Any way of telling where it leads?"
"I can't give you an exact stellar coordinate; but I know where the other end has to emerge. The xenocs never called for a rescue ship, Marcus. They threaded a wormhole with exotic matter to stop it collapsing, and escaped down it. That is the entrance to a tunnel which leads right back to their homeworld."
Schutz found Marcus in the passenger lounge in capsule C. He was floating centimetres above one of the flatchairs, with the lights down low.
The cosmonik touched his heels to a stikpad on the decking beside the lower hatch. "You really don't like being wrong, do you?"
"No, but I'm not sulking about it, either." Marcus moulded a jaded
grin. "I still think I'm right about the dish, but I don't know how the hell to prove it."
"The wormhole portal is rather conclusive evidence."
"Very tactful. It doesn't solve anything, actually. If they could open a wormhole straight back home, why did they build the dish? Like Katherine said, if you have an accident of that magnitude then you devote yourself completely to survival. Either they called for help, or they went home through the wormhole. They wouldn't do both."
"Possibly it wasn't their dish, they were just here to investigate it."
"Two ancient unknown xenoc races with FTL starship technology is pushing credibility. It also takes us back to the original problem: if the dish isn't a distress beacon, then what the hell was it built for?"
"I'm sure there will be an answer at some time."
"I know, we're only a commercial trader's crew, with a very limited research capability. But we can still ask fundamental questions, like why have they kept the wormhole open for 13,000 years?"
"Because that's the way their technology works. They probably wouldn't consider it odd."
"I'm not saying it shouldn't work for that long, I'm asking why their homeworld would bother maintaining a link to a chunk of derelict wreckage?"
"That is harder for logic to explain. The answer must lie in their psychology."
"That's a cop-out; you can't simply cry alien at everything you don't understand. But it does bring us to my final query, if you can open a wormhole with such accuracy across God knows how many light years, why would you need a starship in the first place? What sort of psychology accounts for that?"
"All right, Marcus, you got me. Why?"
"I haven't got a clue. I've been reviewing all the file texts we have on wormholes, trying to find a solution which pulls all this together. And I can't do it. It's a complete paradox."
"There's only one thing left then, isn't there?"
Marcus turned to look at the hulking figure of the cosmonik. "What?"
"Go down the wormhole and ask them."
"Yeah, maybe I will. Somebody has to go eventually. What does our dear Katherine have to say on that subject? Can we go inside it in our SII suits?"
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection Page 37