Lian stood close to me. ‘Sir, I don’t understand. The way they are standing together—’
‘These are families,’ I murmured. ‘You’ll pick it up.’
‘Dark matter.’ The new voice was harsh, damaged by smoke.
A man was limping towards me. About my height and age but a lot leaner, he wore a tattered Navy coverall, and was he using an improvised crutch to hobble over the rocky ground, favouring what looked like a broken leg. His face and hair were grey with the ash.
I said, ‘You’re the Academician.’
‘Yes, I’m Tilo.’
‘We’re here to get you out.’
He barked a laugh. ‘Sure you are. Listen to me. Dark matter. That’s why the Xeelee are here, meddling in this system. It may have nothing to do with us at all. Things are going to happen fast. If I don’t get out of here . . . whatever happens, just remember that one thing - dark matter.’
A woman hurried towards me. One of the locals, she was wearing a simple shift of woven cloth, and leather sandals on her feet; she looked maybe forty, strong, tired. An antique translator box hovered at her shoulder. ‘My name is Doel,’ she said. ‘We saw you fall.’
‘Are you in charge here?’
‘I—’ She smiled wearily. ‘Yes, if you like. Will you help us get out of here?’
She didn’t look, or talk, or act, like any Expansion citizen I had ever met. Things truly had drifted here. ‘You are in the wrong place.’ I was annoyed how prissy I sounded. I pointed to the Conurbation, on the other side of the valley. ‘That’s where you’re supposed to be. The evacuation point.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, bemused. ‘We’ve lived here in the village since my grandfather’s time. We didn’t like it, over in Blessed. We came here to live a different way. No replicators. Crops we grow ourselves. Clothes we make—’
‘Mothers and fathers and grandfathers,’ Tilo cackled. ‘What do you think of that, Lieutenant?’
‘Academician, why are you here, in this village?’
He shrugged. ‘I came to study the mountain, as an exemplar of the planet’s geology. I accepted the hospitality of these people. That’s all. I got to like them, despite their - alien culture.’
‘But you left your equipment behind,’ I snapped. ‘You don’t have comms implants. You didn’t even take your mnemonic fluid, did you?’
‘I brought my pickup beacon,’ he said smugly.
‘Lethe, I don’t have time for this.’ I turned to Doel. ‘Look, if you can get your people across the valley, to where that transport is, you’ll be taken out with the rest.’
‘But I don’t think there will be time—’
I ignored her. ‘Academician, can you walk?’
Tilo laughed. ‘No. And you can’t hear the mountain, can you?’
That was when Mount Perfect exploded.
Tilo told me later that, if I’d known where and how to look, I could have seen the north side of the mountain bulging out. The immense chthonic defect had been growing visibly, at a metre a day. Well, I didn’t notice that. Thanks to some trick of acoustics I didn’t even hear the eruption - though it was heard by other Navy teams working hundreds of kilometres away.
But the aftermath was clear enough. With Lian and Doel, and with Academician Tilo limping after us, I ran to the crest of a ridge to see down the length of the valley.
As we watched, a billion tonnes of rock slid into the valley in a monstrous landslide. Already a huge grey thunderhead of smoke and ash was rearing up to the murky sky. A sharp earthquake had caused the mountain’s swollen flank to shear and fall away.
But that was only the start of the sequence of geological events, for the removal of all that weight was like opening a pressurised can. The mountain erupted - not upwards, but sideways, like the blast of an immense weapon, a volley of superheated gas and pulverised rock. The eruption quickly overtook the landslide, and I saw it demolish trees, imports from distant Earth, sentinels centuries old flattened like straws. I was stupefied by the scale of it all.
And there was more to come. From out of the ripped-open side of the mountain, a chthonic blood oozed, yellow-grey, viscous, steaming hot. It began to flow down the mountainside, spilling into rain-cut valleys.
‘That’s a lahar,’ Tilo murmured. ‘Mud. The heat is melting the permafrost - the mountain was snow-covered two weeks ago; did you know that? - making up a thick mixture of volcanic debris and meltwater. I’ve learned a lot of esoteric geology here, Lieutenant.’
‘So it’s just mud,’ said Lian uncertainly.
‘Just mud. You aren’t an earthworm, are you, marine?’
‘Look at the logging camp,’ Doel said.
Already the mud had overwhelmed the heavy equipment, big yellow tractors and huge cables and chains used for hauling logs, crumpling it all like paper. Piles of sawn logs were spilled, immense wooden beams shoved downstream effortlessly. The mud, grey and yellow, was steaming, oddly like curdled milk.
Just mud. For the first time I began to consider the contingency that we might not get out of here.
In which case my primary mission was to preserve Tilo’s data. I quickly used my suit to establish an uplink. We were able to access Tilo’s records, stored in cranial implants, and fire them up to the Spline. But in case it didn’t work—
‘Tell me about dark matter,’ I said. ‘Quickly.’
Tilo pointed up at the sky. ‘That star - the natural sun, the dwarf - shouldn’t exist.’
‘What?’
‘It’s too small. It has only around a twentieth of Earth’s sun’s mass. It should be a planet: a brown dwarf, like a big, fat Jovian. It shouldn’t burn - not yet. You understand that stars form from the interstellar medium - gas and dust. Originally the medium was just Big-Bang hydrogen and helium. But stars bake heavy elements, like metals, in their interiors, and eject them back into the medium when the stars die. So as time goes on, the medium is increasingly polluted.’
Impatiently I snapped, ‘And the point?’
‘The point is that an increase in impurities in the interstellar medium lowers the critical mass needed for a star to be big enough to burn hydrogen. So as time goes by and the medium gets murkier, smaller stars start lighting up. Lieutenant, that star shouldn’t be shining. Not in this era, not for trillions of years yet; the interstellar medium is too clean . . . You know, it’s so small that its surface temperature isn’t thousands of degrees, like Earth’s sun, but the freezing point of water. It is a star with ice clouds in its atmosphere. There may even be liquid water on its surface.’
I looked up, wishing I could see the frozen star better. Despite the urgency of the moment I shivered, confronted by strangeness, a vision from trillions of years downstream.
Tilo said bookishly, ‘What does all this mean? It means that out here in the halo, something, some agent, is making the interstellar medium dirtier than it ought to be. The only way to do that is by making the stars grow old.’ He waved a hand at the cluttered sky. ‘And if you look, you can see it all over this part of the halo; the stellar evolution diagrams are impossibly skewed.’
I shook my head; I was far out of my depth. What could make a star grow old too fast? . . . Oh. ‘Dark matter?’
‘The matter we’re made of - baryonic matter, protons and neutrons and the rest - is only about a tenth of the universe’s total. The rest is dark matter: subject only to gravity and the weak nuclear force, impervious to electromagnetism. Dark matter came out of the Big Bang, just like the baryonic stuff. As our Galaxy coalesced the dark matter was squeezed out of the main disc . . . But it lingered here. This is the domain of dark matter, Lieutenant. Out here in the halo.’
‘And this stuff can affect the ageing of stars.’
‘Yes. A dark matter concentration in the core of a star can change temperatures, and so affect fusion rates.
‘You said an “agent” was ageing the stars. You make it sound intentional.’
He was cautious now, an Academician who didn’t
want to commit himself. ‘The stellar disruption appears non-random.’
Through the jargon, I tried to figure out what this meant. ‘Something is using the dark matter? . . . Or are there life forms in the dark matter? And what does that have to do with the Xeelee, and the problems here on Shade?’
His face twisted. ‘I haven’t figured out the links yet. There’s a lot of history. I need my data desk,’ he said plaintively.
I pulled my chin, thinking of the bigger picture. ‘Academician, you’re on an assignment for the Admiral. Do you think you’re finding what he wants to hear?’
He eyed me carefully. ‘The Admiral is part of a faction within the Navy that is keen to go to war with the Xeelee - if necessary, even to provoke conflict. Some call them extremists. Kard’s actions have to be seen in this light.’
Actually I’d heard such rumours, but I stiffened. ‘He’s my commanding officer. That’s all that matters.’
Tilo sighed. ‘I understand. But—’
‘Lethe,’ Lian said suddenly. ‘Sorry, sir. But that mud is moving fast.’
So it was, I saw.
The mud was filling up the valley, rising rapidly, even as it flowed towards us. It was piling up behind a front that was held back by its own viscosity. As it surged forward the mud ripped away the land’s green coat to reveal bare rock, and was visibly eating away at the walls of the valley itself. Overlaying the crack of tree trunks and the clatter of rock there was a noise like the feet of a vast running crowd, and a sour, sulphurous smell hit me.
The gush out of the mountain’s side showed no signs of abating. That front was already tens of metres high, and would soon reach the village.
‘I can’t believe how fast this stuff is rising,’ I said to Tilo. ‘The volume you’d need to fill up a valley like this—’
‘You and I are used to spacecraft, Lieutenant,’ Tilo said. ‘The dimensions of human engineering. Planets are big. And when they turn against you—’
‘We can still get you out of here. With our suits we can get you over that bridge and to the transport.’
‘What about the villagers?’
I was aware of the woman, Doel, standing beside me silently, just waiting. Which, of course, made me feel worse than if she’d yelled and begged.
There was a scream. We looked down the ridge and saw that the mud had already reached the village’s lower buildings. A young couple with a kid were standing on the roof of a low hut, about to get cut off.
Lian said, ‘Sir? Your orders?’
I waited one more heartbeat, as the mud began to wash over that hut’s porch.
‘Lethe, Lethe.’ I ran down the ridge until I hit the mud.
On the mud’s surface were dead fish that must have jumped out of the river to escape the heat. There was a lot of debris in the flow, from dust to pebbles to small boulders: no wonder it was so abrasive.
Even with the suit’s strength augmentation the mud was difficult stuff to wade through - lukewarm, and with a consistency like wet cement. The stench was bad enough for me to pull my visor over my mouth. By the time I reached the cottage I was already tiring badly.
I found the little ‘family’, parents and child, terrified, glad to see me. The woman was bigger, obviously stronger than the man. I had her hold her infant over her head, while I slung the man over my shoulder. With me leading, and the woman grabbing onto my belt, we waded back towards the higher ground.
All this time the mud rose relentlessly, filling up the valley as if it had been dammed, and every step sapped my energy.
Lian and Doel helped us out of the dirt. I threw myself to the ground, breathing hard. The young woman’s legs had been scoured by rocks in the flow; she had lost one sandal, and her trouser legs had been stripped away.
‘We’re already cut off from the bridge,’ Lian said softly.
I forced myself to my feet. I picked out a building - not the largest, not the highest, but a good compromise. It turned out to be the hospital. ‘That one. We’ll get them onto the roof. I’ll call for another pickup.’
‘Sir, but what if the mud keeps rising?’
‘Then we’ll think of something else,’ I snapped. ‘Let’s get on with it.’
She ran to help as Doel improvised a ladder from a trellis fence.
My first priority was to get Tilo safely lodged on the roof. Then I began to shepherd the locals up there. But we couldn’t reach all of them before the relentless rise of the mud left us all ankle-deep. People began to clamber up to whatever high ground they could find - verandas, piles of boxes, the ground transports, even rocks. Soon maybe a dozen were stranded, scattered on rooftop islands around a landscape turning grey and slick.
I waded in once more, heading towards two young women who crouched on the roof of a small building, like a storage hut. But before I got there the hut, undermined, suddenly collapsed, pitching the women into the flow. One of them bobbed up and was pushed against a stand of trees, where she got stuck, apparently unharmed. But the other tipped over and slipped out of sight. I reached the woman in the trees and pulled her out. The other was gone.
I hauled myself back onto the hospital roof for a break. All around us the mud flowed, a foul-smelling grey river, littered with bits of wood and rock.
My emotions were deep and unwelcome. I’d never met that woman, but her loss was visceral. It was as if, against my will, I had become part of this little community, as we huddled together on the roof of that crudely built hospital. Not to mention the fact that I now wouldn’t be able to fulfil my orders completely.
I prepared to plunge back into the flow.
Tilo grabbed my arm. ‘No. Not yet. You are exhausted. Anyhow you have a call to make, remember? If you can get me a data desk—’
Lian spoke up. ‘Sir. Let me bring in the stranded locals.’ She said awkwardly, ‘I can manage that much.’
Redemption time for this young marine. ‘Don’t kill yourself,’ I told her.
With a grin she slid off the roof.
Briskly, I used my suit’s comms system to set up a fresh link to the Spline. I requested another pickup - was told it was impossible - and asked for Kard.
Tilo requested a Virtual data desk. He fell on it as soon as it appeared. His relief couldn’t have been greater, as if the mud didn’t exist.
When they grasped the situation I had gotten us all into, Admiral Kard and Commissary Xera both sent down Virtual avatars. The two of them hovered over our wooden roof, clean of the mud, gleaming like gods among people made of clay.
Kard glared at me. ‘This is a mess, Lieutenant.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You should have gotten Tilo over that damn bridge while you could. We’re heavily constrained by the Xeelee operations. You realise we probably won’t be able to get you out of here alive.’
It struck me as somewhat ironic that in the middle of a Galaxy-spanning military crisis I was to be killed by mud. But I had made my choice. ‘So I understand.’
‘But, Kard,’ Xera said, her thin face fringed by blocky pixels, ‘he has completed his primary mission, which is to deliver Tilo’s data back to us.’
Kard closed his Eyes, and his image flickered; I imagined Tilo’s data and interpretations pouring into the processors which sustained this semi-autonomous Virtual image, tightly integrated with Kard’s original sensorium. Kard said, ‘Your report needs redrafting, Tilo. Sharpening up. There’s too much about this dark matter crud, Academician.’
Xera said gently, ‘You were here on assignment from your masters in the Navy, with a specific purpose. They wanted to know what the Xeelee are up to. But it’s hard to close your eyes to the clamouring truth, isn’t it, Academician?’
Tilo sighed, his face mud-covered.
‘We must discuss this,’ Kard snapped. ‘All of us, right now. We have a decision to make, a recommendation to pass up the line - and we need to assess what Tilo has to tell us, in case we can’t retrieve him.’
I understood immediately what h
e meant. We were about to put the Xeelee in the dock - us, right here on this beaten-up planet, while the mud rose up around us. And the recommendation we made today might reach all the way back to the great decision-making councils on Earth itself. I felt a deep thrill. Even the locals stirred, apparently aware that something historically momentous was about to happen, even in the midst of their own misfortunes, stuck as we were on that battered wooden roof.
So it began.
At first Tilo wasn’t helpful.
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