Resplendent

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘Because everybody wants to know, as much as we can tell them. Would it be better to lie to them, or keep secrets?’

  ‘How do they react?’

  ‘How do you think? Ensign Tarco, what happened when you did the rounds with Iana?’

  Tarco shrugged. ‘Some took it as closure, I think. Some wept. Some were angry, even threw us out. Others denied it was real . . . They all wanted more information. How it happened, what it was for. Everyone seemed to have a need to be told that those who had died had given their lives for something worthwhile.’

  Dakk nodded. ‘After a time hop you see all those reactions too. Some won’t open the messages. They put them in time capsules, as if putting history back in order. Others take a look, find other ways to cope with the news. We don’t tell people how to react. But we don’t keep anything from them; that’s the policy,’ She studied me. ‘This is a time-travellers’ war, ensign. A war like none we’ve fought before. We are stretching our procedures, even our humanity, to cope with the consequences. But you get used to it.’

  Tarco said apprehensively, ‘Sir, please - what about me?’

  Gravely, Dakk handed him a data desk.

  ‘Hey, buttface,’ he said, reading. ‘You make me your exec. How about that. Maybe it was a bad year in the draft.’

  I didn’t feel like laughing. ‘Read it all.’

  ‘I know what it says.’ His broad face was relaxed.

  ‘You don’t make it home. That’s what it says, doesn’t it? You’re going to die out there, in the Fog.’

  He actually smiled. ‘I’ve been anticipating this since the Torch came into port. Haven’t you?’

  My mouth opened and closed, as if I was a swordtail fish in the belly of a Spline. ‘Call me unimaginative,’ I said. ‘How can you accept this assignment, knowing it’s going to kill you?’

  He seemed puzzled. ‘What else would I do?’

  ‘Yes,’ the captain said. ‘It is your duty. Can’t you see how noble this is, Dakk? Isn’t it right that he should know - that he should live his life with full foreknowledge of the circumstances of his death, and do his duty even so, right up to the final foretold instant?’

  Tarco grabbed my hand. ‘Hey. It’s years off. We’ll see our baby grow.’

  I said dismally, ‘Some love story this is turning out to be.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Commissary Varcin’s Virtual head coalesced in the air. Without preamble he said, ‘Change of plan. Ensign, it’s becoming clear that the evidence to hand will not be sufficient to establish the charges. Specifically it’s impossible to say whether Dakk’s actions hindered the overall war aims. To establish that we’ll have to go to the Libraries, at the Commission’s central headquarters.’

  I did a double-take. ‘Sir, that’s on Earth.’

  The disembodied head snapped, ‘I’m aware of that.’

  I had no idea how bookworm Commissaries on Earth, ten thousand light years away, could possibly have evidence to bear on this front-line incident. But the Commissary explained, and I learned there was more to this messages-from-the-future industry than I had yet imagined. On Earth, the Commission for Historical Truth had been mapping the future. For fifteen thousand years.

  I said, ‘Things weren’t weird enough already.’

  My future self murmured, ‘You get used to it.’

  Varcin’s expression softened a little. ‘Think of it as an opportunity. Every Expansion citizen should see the home world before she dies.’

  ‘Come with me,’ I said impulsively to Tarco. ‘Come with me to Earth.’

  ‘All right.’

  Dakk put her hands on our shoulders. ‘Lethe, but this is a magnificent enterprise.’

  I hated her; I loved her; I wanted her out of my life.

  III

  It was all very well for Varcin to order us to Earth. The Navy wasn’t about to release one of its own to the Commission for Historical Truth without a fight, and there was lengthy wrangling over the propriety and even the legality of transferring the court of inquiry to Earth. In the end a team of Navy lawyers was assigned to the case.

  We were a strange crew, I guess: two star-crossed lovers, court members, Navy lawyers, serving officers, Commissaries and all. Not to mention another version of me. The atmosphere was tense all the way from Base 592.

  But at journey’s end all our differences and politics and emotional tangles were put aside, as we crowded to the hull to sightsee our destination.

  Earth!

  At first it seemed nondescript: just another rocky ball circling an unspectacular star, in a corner of a fragmented spiral arm. But Snowflake surveillance stations orbited in great shells around the planet, all the way out as far as the planet’s single battered Moon, and schools of Spline gambolled hugely in the waves of a mighty ocean that covered half the planet’s surface. It was an eerie thought that down there somewhere in that sea was another Assimilator’s Torch, a junior version of the battered old ship we had seen come limping into port.

  This little world had become the capital of the Third Expansion, an empire that stretched across all the stars I could see, and far beyond. And it was the true home of every human who would ever live. I was thrilled. As our flitter cut into the atmosphere and was wrapped in pink-white plasma, I felt Tarco’s hand slip into mine.

  At least during the journey in we had had time to spend together. We had talked. We had even made love, in a perfunctory way.

  But it hadn’t done us much good. Other people knew far too much about our future, and we didn’t seem to have any choice about it anyhow. There could be no finer intelligence than a knowledge of the future - an ability to see the outcome of a battle not yet waged, or map the turning points of a war not yet declared - and yet what use was that intelligence if the future was fixed, if we were all forced to live out pre-programmed lives? I felt like a rat going through a maze. What room was there for joy?

  I hoped I was going to learn this wasn’t true in the Commission’s future libraries. Of course I wasn’t worrying about the war and the destiny of mankind. I just wanted to know if I really was doomed to become Captain Dakk, battered, bitter, arrogant, far from orthodox - or whether I was still free, free to be me.

  The flitter swept over a continent. I glimpsed a crowded land, and many vast weapons emplacements, intended for the eventuality of a last-ditch defence of the home world. Then we began to descend towards a Conurbation. It was a broad, glistening sprawl of bubble-dwellings blown from the bedrock, and linked by canals. But the scars of the Qax Occupation, fifteen thousand years old, were still visible. Much of the land glistened silver-grey where starbreaker beams and nano-replicators had once worked, turning plains and mountains into a featureless silicate dust.

  The Commissary said, ‘This Conurbation itself was Qax-built. It is still known by its ancient Qax registration of 11729. It was more like a forced labour camp or breeding pen than a human city. It was here that Hama Druz himself developed the Doctrine that has shaped human destiny ever since. It is the headquarters of the Commission. A decision was made to leave the work of the Qax untouched. It shows what will become of us again, if we should falter or fail . . .’

  And so on. His long face was solemn, his eyes gleaming with a righteous zeal. He was a little scary.

  We were taken to a complex right at the heart of the old Conurbation. It was based on the crude Qax architecture, but internally the bubble dwellings had been knocked together and extended underground, making a vast complex whose boundaries I never glimpsed.

  Varcin introduced it as the Library of Futures. Once the Libraries had been an independent agency, Varcin told us, but the Commission had taken them over three thousand years ago. Apparently there had been an epic war among the bureaucrats.

  Tarco and I were each given our own quarters. My room seemed huge, itself extending over several levels, and very well equipped, with a galley and even a bar. I could tell from Captain Dakk’s expression exactly what she thought of this opulence a
nd expense. That bar made a neat Poole’s Blood, though.

  It was very strange to be in a place where a ‘day’ lasted a standard day, a ‘year’ a year. Across the Expansion the standards are set by Earth’s calendar - of course; what else would you use? A ‘day’ on Base 592, for instance, lasted over two hundred standard days, which was actually longer than its ‘year’, which was around half a standard. But on Earth, everything fit together.

  On the second day, the court of inquiry was to resume. But Varcin said that he wanted to run through the Commission’s findings with us - me, Captain Dakk, Tarco - before it all unravelled in front of the court itself.

  So, early on that crucial day, the three of us were summoned to a place Varcin called the Map Room.

  It was like a vast hive, a place of alcoves and bays extending off a gigantic central atrium. On several levels, shaven-headed, long-robed figures walked earnestly, alone or in muttering groups, accompanied by gleaming clouds of Virtuals.

  I think all three of us lowly Navy types, Tarco and I, even the older Dakk, felt scruffy and overwhelmed.

  Varcin stood at the centre of the open atrium. In his element, he just smiled. And he waved his hand, a bit theatrically.

  A series of Virtual dioramas swept over us like the pages of an immense book.

  In those first few moments I saw huge fleets washing into battle, or limping home decimated; I saw worlds gleaming like jewels, beacons of human wealth and power - or left desolated and scarred, lifeless as Earth’s Moon. And, most wistful of all, there were voices. I heard roars of triumph, cries for help.

  I knew what I was seeing. I was thrilled. These were the catalogued destinies of mankind.

  Varcin said, ‘Half a million people work here. Much of the interpretation is automated - but nothing has yet replaced the human eye, human scrutiny, human judgement. You understand that the further away you are from a place, the more uncertainty there is over its timeline compared to yours. So we actually see furthest into the future concerning the most remote events . . .’

  ‘And you see war,’ said Tarco.

  ‘Oh, yes. As far downstream as we can see, whichever direction we choose to look, we see war.’

  I picked up on that. Whichever direction . . . ‘Commissary, you don’t just map the future here, do you? I mean a single future.’

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘I knew it,’ I said gleefully, and they all looked at me oddly. ‘You can change the future.’ And I wasn’t stuck with becoming Captain Dakk. ‘So if you see a battle will be lost, you can choose not to commit the fleet. You can save thousands of lives with a simple decision.’

  ‘Or you could see a Xeelee advance coming,’ Tarco said excitedly. ‘Like SS 433. So you got the ships in position - it was a perfect ambush.’

  Dakk said, ‘Remember the Xeelee have exactly the same power.’

  I hadn’t thought of that. ‘So if they had foreseen SS 433, they could have chosen not to send their ships there in the first place.’

  ‘Yes,’ Varcin said. ‘In fact if intelligence were perfect on both sides, there would never be any defeat, any victory. It is only because future intelligence is not perfect - the Xeelee didn’t foresee the ambush at SS 433 - that any advances are possible.’

  Tarco said, ‘Sir, what happened the first time? What was the outcome of SS 433 before either side started to meddle with the future?’

  ‘Well, we don’t know, ensign. Perhaps there was no engagement at all, and one side or the other saw a strategic hole that could be filled. It isn’t very useful to think that way. You have to think of the future as a rough draft, that we - and the Xeelee - are continually reworking, shaping and polishing. It’s as if we are working out a story of the future we can both agree on.’

  I was still trying to figure out the basics. ‘Sir, what about time paradoxes?’

  Dakk growled, ‘Oh, Lethe, here we go. Somebody always has to ask about time paradoxes. And it has to be you, doesn’t it, ensign?’

  I persisted. ‘I mean’ - I waved a hand at the dioramas - ‘suppose you pick up a beacon with data on a battle. But you decide to change the future; the battle never happens . . . What about the beacon? Does it pop out of existence? And now you have a record of a battle that will never happen. Where did the information come from?’

  Tarco said eagerly, ‘Maybe parallel universes are created. In one the battle goes ahead, in the other it doesn’t. The beacon just leaks from one universe to another.’

  Dakk looked bored.

  Varcin was dismissive. ‘We don’t go in for metaphysics much around here. The cosmos, it turns out, has a certain common sense about these matters. If you cause a time paradox there is no magic. Just an anomalous piece of data that nobody created, a piece of technology with no origin. It’s troubling, perhaps, but only subtly, at least compared to the existence of parallel universes, or objects popping in and out of existence. What concerns us more, day to day, are the consequences of this knowledge.’

  ‘Consequences?’

  ‘For example, the leakage of information from future into past is having an effect on the evolution of human society. Innovations are transmitted backward. We are becoming - static. Rigid, over very long timescales. Of course that helps control the conduct of a war on such immense reaches of space and time. And regarding the war, many engagements are stalemated by foresight on both sides. It’s probable that we are actually extending the war.’

  My blood was high. ‘We’re talking about a knowledge of the future. And all we’re doing with it is set up stalemate after stalemate?’

  For sure Varcin didn’t welcome being questioned like that by an ignorant ensign. He snapped, ‘Look, nobody has run a war this way before. We’re making this up as we go along. But, believe me, we’re doing our best.

  ‘And remember this. Knowledge of the future does not change certain fundamentals about the war. The Xeelee are older than us. They are more powerful, more advanced in every which way we can measure. Logically, given their resources, they should defeat us, whatever we do. We cannot ensure victory by any action we make here, that much is clear. But we suspect that if we get it wrong we could make defeat certain.’ His face closed in. ‘If you work here you become - cautious. Conservative. The further downstream we look the more extensive our decisions’ consequences become. With a wave of a hand in this room I can banish trillions of souls to the oblivion of non-existence - or rather, of never-to-exist.’

  ‘So you don’t wave your hand,’ said Tarco pragmatically.

  ‘Quite. All we can hope for is to preserve at least the possibility of victory, in some of the futures. And we believe that if not for the Mapping, humanity would have lost this war by now.’

  I wasn’t convinced. ‘You can change history. But you will still send Tarco out, knowing he will die. Why?’

  Varcin’s face worked as he tried to control his irritation. ‘You must understand the decision-making process here. We are trying to win a war, not just a battle. We have to try to see beyond individual events to the chains of consequences that follow. That is why we will sometimes commit ships to a battle we know will be lost - why we will send warriors to certain deaths, knowing their deaths will not gain the slightest immediate advantage - why sometimes we will even allow a victory to turn to a defeat, if the long-term consequences of victory are too costly. And that is at the heart of the charges against you, Captain.’

  Dakk snapped, ‘Get to the point, Commissary.’

  Varcin gestured again.

  Before the array of futures, a glimmering Virtual diagram appeared. It was a translucent sphere, with many layers, something like an onion. Its outer layers were green, shading to yellow further in, with a pinpoint star of intense white at the centre. Misty shapes swam through its interior. It cast a green glow on all our faces.

  ‘Pretty,’ I said.

  ‘It’s a monopole,’ said Dakk. ‘A schematic representation.’

  ‘The warhead of the Sunrise torpedo.’ />
  ‘Yes.’ Varcin walked into the diagram, and began pointing out features. ‘The whole structure is about the size of an atomic nucleus. There are W and Z bosons in this outer shell here. Further in there is a region in which the weak nuclear and electromagnetic forces are unified, but strong nuclear interactions are distinct. In this central region’ - he cupped the little star in his hand - ‘grand unification is achieved.’

  I spoke up. ‘Sir, so how does this hurt the Xeelee?’

  Dakk glared at me. ‘Ensign, the monopole is the basis of a weapon which shares the Xeelee’s own physical characteristics. You understand that the vacuum has a structure. That structure contains flaws. The Xeelee actually use two-dimensional flaws - sheets - to power their nightfighters. But in three-dimensional space you can also have one-dimensional flaws - strings - and zero-dimensional flaws.’