Even through the crude wormhole telemetry link she could hear the distress in his voice. The temperature at the centre is way, way down, Lieserl. In fact—
‘In fact,’ she said quietly, ‘it’s possible the fusion processes have already been extinguished altogether. Isn’t it, Kevan? Perhaps the core of the Sun has already gone out, like a smothered flame.’
Yes. Lieserl, the most disturbing thing for me is that no one here can come up with a mechanism for such a photino cloud to form naturally . . .
‘What’s the lifecycle prediction? How long has the Sun left to live?’
No hesitation this time. Zero.
At first the blunt word made no sense. ‘What?’
Zero, on the scales we’re talking about - timescales measured in billions of years. In practice, we’re looking at perhaps one to ten million years left. Lieserl, that’s nothing in cosmic terms.
‘I know. But it ties in with the predictions out of Paradoxa, doesn’t it? The data they collected through Michael Poole’s wormhole daisy-chain.’
Yes.
‘Kevan, you shouldn’t feel too distressed. Five million years is fifty times the length of human history so far—’
Maybe. Kevan’s voice took on a harder edge, as if he personally resented the ageing of the Sun. But I have kids. I hope to have descendants still alive in five million years. Damn it, I hope to be sentient still myself. Why not? It’s only five megayears; we’re out of the Dark Ages now, Lieserl.
She peered deep into the heart of the Sun, subvocally trying to press more of her functions into play. She had senses to pick up the ghostly shades of neutrino and photino fluxes, and if she just - tried - hard enough, she ought to be able to make out the dark matter cloud itself.
‘I’ll have to go deeper,’ she murmured.
What?
‘I said I’m going deeper. I want to find out what’s down there. In the core.’
Lieserl—
‘Come on, Kevan. Spare me any warnings about caution. You can’t tell me that Paradoxa has invested so much in me so far, only to have me turn back just inside the damn photosphere.’
You’ve already achieved an astonishing amount.
‘And I can achieve a lot more. I’m going in, Kevan. Just as I’ve been designed to. I want to see just what has, put out our Sun.’ Or, she thought uneasily, who.
Scholes hesitated. The truth is, you’re only an experiment, Lieserl. Damn it, we didn’t even know what conditions you would encounter in there.
‘So I’ll take my time. You can redesign me en route. I’ve all the time in the world.
‘I’ll follow the bouncing photons. Maybe it will take me a million years to drift into the centre. But I’m going to get there.’
Lieserl, Paradoxa wants you to go on. But - you must listen to this - it is prepared to risk you not returning. Your trip could be one way, Lieserl. Do you understand? Lieserl ?
She shut out the whispering, remote voice, and stared into the oceanic depths of the Sun.
PART II
TRAJECTORY: TIMELIKE
8
His legs locked around a branch of the kapok tree, Arrow Maker raised his bow towards the skydome. The taut bowstring dug into the tough flesh of his three middle fingers, and the bow itself had a feeling of heaviness, of power. The arrow balanced in his grasp, light, perfect.
Maker’s bare, hairless skin was slick from the exertion of climbing. He was close to the top of the canopy here, and the clicks, rustles, trills and coughs of the approaching evening sounded from everywhere within the great layer of life around him. Somewhere a group of howler monkeys were calling out their territorial claims, their eerie, almost choral wails rising and falling.
He released the bow string.
The arrow hissed into the air, and the guide line it towed unravelled past Arrow Maker’s face with the faintest of breezes.
He heard a clatter in the branches, a few yards away from him, as the arrow returned. But the line didn’t fall back; Maker had succeeded in hooking it over an upper branch of the kapok.
He slung his bow across his shoulder, retrieved his quiver, and clambered across the branches, his bare feet easily finding purchase on moss-laden bark. He found the arrow in a mound of moss at the junction of a banyan’s trunk with a branch. Working quickly and efficiently, Arrow Maker unravelled a rope from his waist and attached it to the line; the rope - spun by his daughter from liana fibre - was as thick as his finger, and, working by touch, Maker found the rope heavy and difficult to knot.
When the rope was firmly attached Arrow Maker began to haul at the guide line. The rope slithered up through layers of leaves. Soon Maker had pulled the rope over the branch above. He tugged at the rope; there was some give, as the unseen kapok branch flexed, but the hold was more than strong enough to support his weight.
He detached the guide line and wrapped it around his waist. He clipped two metal hand-grips onto the rope. There was a webbing stirrup attached to each grip, and Arrow Maker placed his feet in these. Standing with his weight in one stirrup he moved the other a few feet upwards. Then he raised himself and moved the other grip, up past the first. Thus Arrow Maker climbed smoothly up through the remaining layers of canopy. The grips slid upwards easily, but ratchets prevented them from slipping down. One of the grips felt a little loose - it was worn, he suspected - but it was secure enough.
As he climbed up through layers of greenery towards the sky, Maker relaxed into the familiar rhythm of the simple exercise, enjoying the glowing feeling in his joints as his muscles worked. The heavy belt around his waist, with its pockets of webbing for his tools and food, bumped softly against his skin; he barely noticed the bow and quiver slung over his shoulder.
The grips, and ropes and stirrups, had belonged to Arrow Maker for at least twenty years. They were among his most treasured possessions: his life depended on them, and they were almost irreplaceable. The people of the forest could make rope, and bows, and face paint, but they simply didn’t have the raw materials to manufacture grips and stirrups - or, come to that, knives, spectacles and many other essential day-to-day objects. Even old Uvarov - rolling around the forest floor in his chair - admitted as much.
To get his set of climbing gear, the younger Arrow Maker had traded with the Undermen.
He’d spent many days collecting forest produce: fruit, the flesh of birds, bowls of copaifera sap. He piled his goods in one of the great Locks set in the floor of the forest. He’d communicated his needs to the Undermen by an elaborate series of scratches made with the point of his knife in the scarred surface of the Lock.
When he’d returned to the Lock the next day, there lay the climbing gear he’d wanted, gleaming new and neatly laid out. Of the forest goods there was no sign.
The forest folk relied on Underman artifacts to stay alive. But similarly, Arrow Maker had often thought, perhaps the Undermen needed forest food to survive. Perhaps it was dark down there, beneath the forest, cut off from the light; perhaps the Men couldn’t grow their own food. Arrow Maker shivered; he had a sudden vision of a race of nocturnal, huge-eyed creatures skulking like loris through the lifeless, ever-darkened levels below his feet.
He reached the top of his rope. The anchoring branch was only a couple of hand’s-breadths thick, but it was solid enough A tree-swift’s nest - a ball of bark and feathers, glued by spittle - clung to the side of the branch, sheltering its single egg.
He selected a fatter branch and sat on it, wrapping his legs around its junction with the trunk He placed his bow and quiver carefully beside him, lodging them safely. He drew some dried meat from his belt and chewed at the tough, salty stuff as he gazed around.
Now he’d climbed close to the crown of the kapok tree. The great tree’s last few branches were silhouetted against the darkling skydome above him, their clusters of brownish leaves rustling.
The mass of the canopy was perhaps thirty yards below the skydome, but this single giant kapok raised its bulk above the re
st, its uppermost branches almost grazing the sky. The darkness of the evening rendered this upper world almost as dark as the forest floor, far below him. But Maker knew his way around the kapok; after all he’d been climbing it for most of his eighty years.
He was at the top of the world. In the distance a bird flapped across the sky, its colours a gaudy splash against the fading light. Beyond the skydome, the stars were coming out. The kapok’s branches were a dense, tangled mass beneath him, obscuring its immense trunk. Seeds - fragments of fluffy down - floated everywhere, peppering the leaves with the last of the daylight. Ten yards below the tree’s crown, the canopy was a rippling carpet, a dense layer of greenery - turning oily black as night approached - which stretched to the horizon, lapping against the walls of the skydome itself.
Garry Uvarov had sent Arrow Maker up here to inspect the sky. So Maker tipped up his face.
It was tempting to reach up and see if he could touch the sky.
He couldn’t, of course - the skydome was still at least twenty feet above him - but it would be easy enough to shoot up an arrow, to watch it clatter against the invisible roof.
The sky was unchanged. The stars were a thin, irregular sprinkling, hardly disturbing the sky’s deep emptiness. Most of the stars were dull red points of light, like drops of blood, that were often difficult to see.
Uvarov had never shown interest in the stars before; now, suddenly, he’d ordered Arrow Maker to climb the trees, telling him to expect a sky blazing with stars, white, yellow and blue. Well, he’d been quite wrong.
Maker felt that old Uvarov was important: precious, like a talisman. But, as the years wore by, his words and imperatives seemed increasingly irrational.
Maker looked for the sky patterns he’d grown to know since his boyhood. There were the three stars, of a uniform brightness, in a neat row; there the familiar circle of stars dominated by a bright, scarlet gleam.
Nothing had changed in the sky above him, in the stars beyond the dome. Arrow Maker didn’t even know what Uvarov was expecting him to find.
He clambered down into the bulk of the kapok treetop, so that there was a comforting layer of greenery between himself and the bare sky. Then he tied himself to the trunk with a loop of rope, laid his head against a pillowing arm and waited for sleep.
The klaxon’s oscillating wail echoed off the houses, the empty streets, the walls of the sky.
Morrow woke immediately.
For a moment he lay in bed, staring into the sourceless illumination which bathed the ceiling above him.
Waking, at least, was easy. Some mornings the klaxon failed to sound - it was as imperfect and liable to failure as every other bit of equipment in the world - but on those mornings Morrow found his eyes opening on time, just as usual. He pictured his brain as a worn, ancient thing, with grooves of habit ground into its surface. He woke at the same time, every day.
Just as he had for the last five centuries.
Stiffly he swung his legs from his pallet and stood up. He started to think through the shift ahead. Today he was due for an interview with Planner Milpitas - yet another interview, he thought - and he felt his heart sink.
He walked to the window and swung his arms back and forth to generate a little circulation in his upper body. From his home here on Deck Two Morrow could make out, through the open, multilayered flooring, some details of Deck Three below; he looked down over houses, factories, offices and - looming above all the other buildings - the imposing shoulders of the Planner Temples, scattered across the split levels like blocky clouds. Beyond the buildings and streets stood the walls of the world: sheets of metal, ribbed for strength. And over it all lay the multilevelled sky, a lid of girders and panels, enclosing and oppressive.
He worked through his morning rituals - washing, shaving his face and scalp, taking some dull, high-fibre food. He dressed in his cleanest standard-issue dungarees. Then he set off for his appointment with Planner Milpitas.
The community occupied two Decks, Two and Three. The inhabited Decks were laid out following a circular geometry, in a pattern of sectors and segments divided from each other by roads tracing out chords and radii. Deck Four, the level beneath Three, was accessible but uninhabited; Paradoxa had long ago decreed that it be used as a source of raw materials. And there was also one level above, called Deck One, which was also uninhabited - but served other purposes.
Morrow had no idea what lay above Deck One, or below Deck Four. The Planners didn’t encourage curiosity.
There were few people about as he crossed the Deck. He walked, of course; the world was only a mile across, so walking or cycling almost always sufficed. Morrow lived in Segment 2, an undesirable slice of the Deck close to the outer hull. The Temple was in Sector 3 - almost diametrically opposite, but close to the heart of the Deck. Morrow was able to cut down the radial walkways, past Sector 5, and walk almost directly to the Temple.
Much of Sector 5 was still known as Poole Park - a name which had been attached to it since the ship’s launch, Morrow had heard. There was nothing very park-like about it now, though. Morrow, in no hurry to be early for Milpitas, walked slowly past rows of poor, shack-like dwellings and shops. The shops bore the names of their owners and their wares, but also crude, vivid paintings of the goods to be obtained inside. Here and there, between the walls of the shops, weeds and wild flowers struggled to survive. He passed a couple of maintenance ‘bots: low-slung trolleys fitted with brushes and scoops, toiling their way down the worn streets.
The rows of small dwellings, the boxy shops and meeting-places, the libraries and factories, looked as they always did: not drab, exactly - each night everything was cleansed by the rain machines - but uniform.
Some old spark stirred in Morrow’s tired mind. Uniform. Yes, that was the word. Dreadfully uniform. Now he was approaching the Planners’ Temple. The tetrahedral pyramid was fully fifty yards high, built of gleaming metal and with its edges highlighted in blue. Morrow felt dwarfed as he approached it, and his steps slowed, involuntarily; in a world in which few buildings were taller than two storeys, the Temples were visible everywhere, huge, faceless - and intimidating.
As, no doubt, they were meant to be.
Planner Milpitas turned the bit of metal over and over in his long fingers, eyeing Morrow. His desk was bare, the walls without adornment. ‘You ask too many questions, Morrow.’ The Planner’s bare scalp was stretched paper-thin over his skull and betrayed a faint tracery of scars.
Morrow tried to smile; already, as he entered the interview, he felt immensely tired. ‘I always have.’
The Planner didn’t smile. ‘Yes. You always have. But my problem is that your questions sometimes disturb others.’
Morrow tried to keep himself from trembling. At the surface of his mind there was fear, and a sense of powerlessness - but beneath that there was an anger he knew he must struggle to control. Milpitas could, if he wished, make life very unpleasant for Morrow.
Milpitas held up the artifact. ‘Tell me what this is.’
‘It’s a figure-of-eight ring.’
‘Did you make it?’
Morrow shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps. It’s a standard design in the shops on Deck Four.’
‘All right.’ Milpitas placed the ring on his desk, with a soft clink. ‘Tell me what else you make. Give me a list.’
Morrow closed his eyes and thought. ‘Parts for some of the machines - the food dispensers, for instance. Not the innards, of course - we leave that to the nanobots - but the major external components. Material for buildings - joists, pipes, cables. Spectacles, cutlery: simple things that the nanobot maintenance crews can’t repair.’
Milpitas nodded. ‘And?’
‘And things like your figure-of-eight ring.’ Morrow struggled, probably failing, to keep a note of frustration out of his voice. ‘And ratchets, and stirrups. Scrapers—’
‘All right. Now, Morrow, the value of a joist, or a pair of spectacles, is obvious. But what do you think of thi
s question: what is the value of your figure-of-eight rings, ratchets and stirrups?’
Morrow hesitated. This was exactly the kind of question which had landed him in trouble in the first place. ‘I don’t know,’ he blurted at last. ‘Planner, it drives me crazy not to know. I look at these things and try to work out what they might be used for, but—’
The Planner raised his hands. ‘You’re not answering me, Morrow.’
Morrow was confused. He’d long since learned that when dealing with people like Milpitas, words turned into weapons, fine blades whose movements he could barely follow. ‘But you asked me what the ratchets were for.’
‘No. I asked you what you thought of the question, not for an answer to the question itself. That’s very different.’
Morrow tried to work that out. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand.’
‘No.’ The Planner rested his long, surgery-scarred fingers on the desk before him. Milpitas seemed to be one of those unfortunate individuals suffering a partial AS failure, necessitating this kind of gross rework of his body. ‘No, I really believe you don’t. And that’s precisely the problem, isn’t it, Morrow?’
He stood and walked to the window of his office. From here Morrow could see the outer frame of the Temple; its face was a tilted plane of golden light. Milpitas’ wide, bony face was framed by the iron sky, the sourceless daylight.
‘The question has no value,’ Milpitas said at length. ‘And so an answer to it would have no value - it would be meaningless, because the question in itself has no reference to anything meaningful.’ He turned to Morrow and smiled searchingly. ‘I know you’re not happy with that answer. Go ahead; don’t be afraid. Tell me what you think.’
Morrow sighed. I think you’re crazy. ‘I think you’re playing with words.’ He picked up the ring. ‘Of course this thing has a purpose. It exists, physically. We expend effort in making it—’
‘Everything we do has a purpose, Morrow, and one purpose only.’ Milpitas looked solemn. ‘Do you know what that is?’
Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring Page 98