“Ummm. So you’re a moral philosopher.”
They were halfway back to Argo when Cermo called over comm,—Hey! What in hell are you—
“Got some juice you should look at,” Toby said.
—You got that alien to take you out. That’s direct disobedience of an order.—
“I was hauled along for the ride, Cermo.”
Quath confirmed,
Quath hardly ever intervened in a human conversation. Toby was surprised and pleased.
Cermo sounded annoyed.—I know something else he’s full of. Anyway, get back here. We’ve got to find food supplies and then move on.—
“How come? I’d like to explore this—”
—Those big things orbiting closer to the Center? The Bridge just got a spectro-reading. They told me the nearest one’s not mech-made at all, like we thought.—
“What is it, then?”
—Human-made. An ancient Chandelier.—
THREE
The Rule of Number
Besen came by Toby’s bunk to see if he wanted to go up to the viewing room. She was sweaty from her work—hand-cultivating the vegetable fields in the single lush growing dome they had left. Her overalls were grungy, light brown wisps of hair were escaping from a tight bun, and she beamed at him, still flush with energy to burn.
“Sorry, can’t,” Toby said mournfully. He was propped up on his bunk, pushing a stylus around a writing slate, without much real progress.
“Oh, come on! That’ll wait.”
“Cermo’s got me under orders. I’ve got to get through five lessons before I can go off-ship again.”
“That’s cruel.” She smiled sympathetically. Everybody wanted to get outside, after years of ship living, but Toby more so.
“Well, I am kinda behind.”
Besen tossed her head with pretty annoyance. “Let’s see what you’re—oh, numbers. Yuk!”
“They have their charms—but not right now.”
“I just don’t see the point of them, really. I mean, machines think in numbers—so why should we bother?”
“Look, somebody who doesn’t use numbers has no advantage over somebody who can’t use them.”
“But mechs think that way.” Plainly Besen felt that associating anything with mechs ruled it out.
“And so does Argo—without its computers, we’d be dead. Mechs are evil, sure. Because of what they do, not what they use. Numbers are like words—ways of saying things about the world.”
“Well, they don’t speak to me.”
“And I shouldn’t be speaking to you either. I’ve got to plow through these lessons or else I won’t get to go look at the Chandelier at all.” Toby sighed and stretched, his feet bumping into the ceramic bulkhead. He was lanky and this bunk was getting too short for him. He would have to hunt up a bigger one elsewhere in the dorm rooms that all unmarried Family used.
“Cermo said that? He’s getting tough.”
“I think it’s my dad jerking the strings again.”
Besen snorted in frustration. “Our beloved Cap’n. Why can’t he leave his own son alone?”
“I don’t know,” Toby said, though he had a pretty good idea. It wasn’t anything he wanted to talk over, though, not even with Besen.
She gazed pensively into the distance. “Y’know, after Shibo died, he seemed to recover. But lately, he’s been spending more time by himself, barking orders, keeping everybody in the dark about what he’s thinking. And he treats you funny.” Her eyes slid over to him, inviting a reply.
Toby edged away from specifics with, “Maybe fathers and sons always have trouble.”
“Your father is something else.” Besen’s voice dripped with implications.
“Meaning?”
“He’s rough on everybody. Downright nasty.”
Toby gave her a grim smile. “Maybe he doesn’t want anybody to feel left out.”
“A humorist.” Besen had lost some of her buoyancy. “But I mean it, really. Cap’n Killeen is driving us all hard, and people don’t like it. Except maybe the Cards—they had tough leaders so long—crazy ones even!—they like ’em.”
“Ummm. We’ve gotten soft, living in this comfy ship.”
“Comfy? I spent today on my knees, hand-tending every tomato plant, coaxing them to stay alive.”
“Because we screwed up the other domes. Argo would work fine if we weren’t so dumb.”
Grumpily Besen said, “Well, your dad doesn’t make life any easier.”
Toby nodded glumly. He had made the usual defenses of his father, but they didn’t convince even him. He had seen enough incidents in which Killeen raged at minor infractions, imposed harsh penalties for malingering, raised work hours. A big change from the Killeen of old, who had been affable and casual about the rigors of rank.
“We’re in danger all the time. He’s responsible for us all. Give him some room, okay?” This sounded lame even to Toby, but he could not bring himself to condemn his father. For too many years, after the mechs killed Toby’s mother, Killeen had been the only one who had looked after him.
Besen saw Toby’s mood and leaned over to give him a light kiss. “Sorry if I brought you down. Or considering what you’re studying, even further down.”
“Aw, beat it. Go oooh and ahhh at the views of the Chandelier.”
She made a face. “Just for that, I will.”
Family Bishop was approaching the Chandelier slowly, cautiously, using passing small clouds for cover. The chunky, complex mass was sprawling, ornate, larger even than mech cities on Snowglade—but humans had built the Chandeliers, long ago. Humans. The idea seemed impossible to Toby when he studied the distant spiral wings, criss-crossing arms, and noble, sweeping arches.
Nobody in Family Bishop had ever visited one. There was anticipation—and something like fear.
They would go aboard within a day. Argo echoed with a din of preparation. Toby shut it out and reluctantly turned his concentration to his lessons. He could feel his teaching Aspect, Isaac, fidgeting at the back of his mind, eager to have a voice. Aspects were long-dead and liked to get out of the cramped cerebral spaces where they were stored. In one sense they were only alive when Toby talked with them. In another, they were always there, at a very low level, like an oldster dozing lazily in the sun. Whatever the picture Toby used, he figured his Aspects were like laundry—they smelled better if they got aired now and then. Isaac said eagerly,
I’m happy to see you showing some interest in mathematics. Have you finished your problems?
“I did some. They’re so boring, though.”
Isaac said rather sternly,
I scarcely think you should criticize the problems I assign, considering how seldom you even speak to me or—
“Okay, okay—give me something different, though.”
Very well. Suppose you write down all the numbers from one to one hundred. One, two, three . . . and so on, up to one hundred.
“That’s interesting?” This Aspect had been in its box too long.
You will learn faster if you do not interrupt. Now, I want you to find a way to add up all those numbers.
“You mean one plus two plus three—like that?”
That is the brute force way to do it. Crude, unimaginative. I want you to be clever.
“Oh no,” Toby groaned. Being clever on command was about as easy as being funny under orders. Already he ached to be outside, working in the ship, not in his head.
Toby wasn’t much for studying, but he got it done. He fooled around on the writing slate a little, and then something in the numbers began to speak back to him. A pattern. He wrote the numbers as pairs:
1100
299
398
**
**
4952
5051
Each pair added up to 101. There were 50 of them, so that multiplied to 5,050.
Toby blinked. Who would have guessed that the number would be so large and interesting?
There was something strangely stirring in how numbers could hold such simple, supple majesty in them.
Predictably, Isaac liked this trick.
Excellent! The point of exercises is to stretch the mind. To think in new paths. See?
“Seems to me we’re getting pretty stretched already. You saw that sail-snake, right? You Aspects still register data, even though you’re tucked ’way back in there.”
I receive a faint trace of what you do. Yes, that was an interesting creature. I recall a historical record, from the Chandelier Age, which told of expeditions into the molecular clouds. Humanity hunted such vacuum beasts, speeding through spaces as large as whole solar systems, all for recreation.
“Hard to think of people going up against those things for fun.”
Humans like danger. The legends and stories of Family Bishop—what are they, after all, but tales of people in trouble?
“Yeah, but trouble that’s a comfortable distance away from the teller.”
You are rather young to be so cynical.
“Just realistic, Isaac. It’s easy for you to take a cosmic view. After all, anything happens to me, you’re still okay. They just pull your chip out of my spine and you get revived in somebody else.”
I am shocked that you would think me indifferent to your fate. I am a loyal Aspect, devoted to Family Bishop—
“Okay, okay, spare the speech. Let’s get back to work.”
The mathematics got interesting after you really burrowed into it. A kind of elaborate game, really, with some beautiful surprises hidden in the structure. It would be worth doing even if it wasn’t useful, kind of like music. When he told Quath about his little trick, she had rattled with approval, remarking that there were applications of his idea to True Center—and then refused to discuss it further, since she was still digesting this information, fresh in from the illuminates, herself.
But the amazing thing, when Toby took the time to think about it, was that math was practical. The world ran according to the rule of pure Number. Math described the orbits of stars, how circuits worked, even the ways odd features like a funny-shaped nose or red eyes got passed down from one generation to the next in Family Bishop.
What it didn’t help with was Cermo.
The big man hadn’t been any too happy with Toby’s “running off” with Quath, for starters. Then there was the double embarrassment that the red fluid that they fetched back turned out to be packed with useful nutrients. It was even tasty. He and Quath had stolen Cermo’s thunder.
So they had to sit it out while the Family had quickly raided all along the length of the sail-snake, taking the red liquid where they could. Not too much, though; Family Bishop codes would never allow endangering the life of so vast a living thing.
A few Family went deeper into the inky recesses of the molecular cloud. Besen had been with them, and her tales of the exotic lifeforms there had made Toby envious. This molecular mist was one of the smaller ones, yet it abounded in bizarre shapes. Triple-spined things, with spreading panels to soak up sunlight. Big, billowing beasts that looked like fabled sailing ships. Mean-eyed predators with tight, leathery mouths, stingy with their precious internal gases. Blimps with enormous eyes to find food in the shifting starglow. Tangles of wispy grasses growing from watery pouches. Forests of swaying yellow leaves. Helical rod-trees that telescoped out, seeking more starlight. Warty living skins that wrinkled and stretched to wrap around spindly purple trunks, partners in some mysterious life process.
They found a huge, self-propelled, rust-red pyramid that seemed like a peaceful grazer, feeding on enormous gray cobwebs, sucking in strands like delicious spaghetti. These thin nets collected the drifting molecules of the great clouds. They looked appetizing, but nobody in the Family could stand the stuff. Besen thought maybe they needed some sauce.
Worse, the red pyramid-beast didn’t like tiny creatures picking at its feeding grounds, either. It was as big as the sail-snake and hard to argue with. It chased the offenders all the way back to the ship, veering away only when it saw that Argo was not just a fellow giant.
Besen thought it wasn’t at all obvious who would win, if it had come to a fight between the pyramid and Argo. Who knew what tricks a few billion years of evolution could cook up inside a molecular cloud?
But all this had happened while Toby was confined to the ship. He gritted his teeth, swore a little for the pure pleasure of it, and then went back to work.
When he finished his lessons and Isaac certified his work, he reported to Cermo, got his next-day assignment, and turned to leave.
“Hold on,” Cermo said. “Report to the Cap’n.”
“Huh? I wanted to go outside, get a good look at the Chandelier.”
Cermo said sternly. “Argo’s not run for your amusement. Go.”
Cap’n Killeen stood with hands behind his back, studying his office wall screens. They showed closeup images of the Chandelier being sent back by Argo’s automatic flyers. Massive spiral arms. Swooping webs that, under magnification, proved to be linked apartments. Toby tried to imagine living in such places, amid vast lines that dwindled by perspective toward glowing masses in the immense distance.
“Think it’s inhabited, Dad?”
Killeen turned slowly from the brilliant screens, his face veiled. “No. The mechs stormed all the Chandeliers thousands of years ago. This one is better preserved, so maybe there wasn’t a big fight over it.”
“Are you sure?”
Killeen shook his head slowly, obviously consulting an Aspect. “Must be. Records are poor, though.”
“Somebody must have Aspects from that far back.”
“None from this sector, so close to True Center.”
Toby knew that Aspects got hazy and scratchy with age. Chandelier Aspects had to have interpretation programs added, to understand them at all. And it wasn’t just the shifts in language. The hardest things to convey were the concepts. Nobody could really comprehend how the Chandelier folk thought. “If we could get some idea—”
Killeen shook his head. “Humans were spread all over, back then. This Chandelier, it looks pretty damn fine all right, but it might have been just a minor outpost, for all we know.”
“Huh? But it’s, it’s beautiful.”
Killeen grinned. “Suresay—to us. Maybe it was nothing special to people from the Great Times.”
Toby looked skeptical and Killeen waved at the screens, where wonders unfolded. “Look, once people retreated from their Chandeliers, they went down to live on planets again. Things got rough. We stopped building big, and settled for what we could protect from mechs. The Family of Families spread out among the stars, looking for safe places to hide.”
“That was the Hunker Down, right?”
“The beginning of it. They figured to hide out on planets. Thought mechs wouldn’t have much use for them.”
“Because mechs live best in space?”
Killeen grimaced wryly. “So they thought. On Snowglade and Trump, we first built the Grand Arcologies— cities like little Chandeliers, but smaller because of the gravity. The damn mechs smashed them. Our tech stuff got worse and we built the Low Arcologies. Still pretty damn big places, mind you. I saw the ruins of one.”
“You told me. Big as a mountain.”
“Well, maybe a little smaller. Too big for the mechs, though. They got through our defenses and flattened the little arcologies, too, eventually.”
The ancient anger in Killeen’s voice made Toby say in sympathy, “So we built the Citadels. Kept going.”
“Yeasay—and kept ’em well hid, so we thought. Had to live by raidin’ off the new mech manufacturing complexes. Then the mech city-minds sent rat-catchers to blast each Family’s Citadel. Rooting people out, casting them to the winds. Till only Citadel Bishop was l
eft. Then came our turn—remember?”
Toby recalled with reluctance their flight from Citadel Bishop. He had been just a boy, confused, scared. Fire and smoke and death. His mother, killed by the mechs with merciful, cold swiftness.
He shook himself: “Look, Cermo said to report to you.”
Killeen nodded silently. Toby could tell that he, too, had trouble shaking off the dark past. Killeen abruptly turned and sat behind his broad, uncluttered desk. “I think you’ve been getting out of hand.”
“Oh, the sail-snake thing? Look, it wasn’t my idea.”
“You should not get Quath stirred up. She is unpredictable.”
“Quath carried me out there. There was nothing I could do.”
“You could’ve signaled us, told us what was going on.”
Toby shrugged. “I didn’t think of that.”
“When you get in trouble, consult your Aspects.”
“Didn’t think of that either.”
“You’re carrying a lot of experience in those Aspects. Let them help you.”
“They nag me a lot.”
Killeen smiled. “That goes with the deal. They don’t get to do anything except talk, remember. Imagine what that’s like.”
“I’d rather not,” Toby said, uneasy at how this conversation was turning.
“You’ve got to get used to working with them. Fluid. So you reach for them automatically, like scratching yourself.”
“They don’t ride so easy yet,” Toby admitted uncomfortably.
Killeen gazed steadily at him for a long moment that widened between them. “How . . . how is she?”
So it had finally come out. Again.
“The same . . . of course.”
Killeen’s lost love, Shibo. The woman who had come into Killeen’s life after Toby’s mother died, a woman Toby had come to accept as nearly a replacement mother. The once-vibrant Shibo now existed only as an Aspect carried in Toby.
She had been killed on Trump, cut down by enemy fire. In a trap set by His Supremacy, a mech-human hybrid. Toby and Killeen had managed to get her back to Argo. In the recording room the ship’s instruments had spoken of potassium levels and neurological amalgams and digital matching matrices, terms nobody in Family Bishop understood. Or their Aspects.
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