To Hold Infinity

by John Meaney

  A tousle-haired Eric appeared above the terminal.

  “Hello—? Oh, Yoshiko.”

  In the image's background, a slender bare arm, and a woman calling, “Who is it, Eric?”

  Yoshiko recognized the voice: Jenna.

  “Sorry,” she said, as the colour heightened in Eric's cheeks. “I didn't mean to intrude. Just wanted to thank you again, for showing me around.”

  “You're welcome, of course. I enjoyed it.”

  “Well—Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  Yoshiko waved the display away.

  She knelt in the darkness, facing the blank wall, seeing nothing.

  Hushed by anti-sound, enticingly lit, the little maze of quirky boutiques was an easy place in which to lose all track of time. Yoshiko, munching chocolate jantrasta, finally sat down by a fountain, and looked through the bag of drama crystals she had purchased.

  “Bought anything nice?”

  “Vin! How are you?” Yoshiko held up a crystal. “Rekka Chandri, Space Explorer. Don't ask. But have a sweet.”

  Vin shook her head. “We're eating soon. I was hoping you could join us. Maybe just for a drink?”

  “I'd love to. Have we time for a few more stores?”

  Vin smiled brightly. “If we go that way—” She pointed down a winding red-tiled corridor. “—We'll be heading in the right direction.”

  They walked past a Flaxian restaurant, boasting Sumtravnadni cuisine. A blimplike holo out front might have been the proprietor, or the plat du jour.

  Vin wrinkled her nose. “I don't think I fancy—Hey, look. There's a Pilot!”

  There was a crowd up ahead, but they parted to let the slight, black-jumpsuited man pass through. Quiet-looking. Nothing arrogant about him.

  “Impressive, isn't he?” murmured Vin.

  “They all are.”

  They watched until he disappeared into a side corridor.

  Yoshiko let out her breath. “Perhaps we should head straight for your parents.”

  “Lori's my soul-mother. We are genetically related, but not closely.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “No reason why you should know.” A slight frown creased Vin's forehead. “Septor's her consort.”

  To their left, a door-membrane bore an upward-pointing blue arrow.

  “The restaurant's a long way round the rim,” said Vin. “We'd save time going straight through, if you don't mind the g-shift.”

  “No problem,” said Yoshiko, hiding her uncertainty.

  “You're sure?”

  Yoshiko nodded, and led the way through the membrane. A small spherical car was bobbing inside, waiting. She and Vin took facing cocoon seats.

  Acceleration clutched her as the car shot upwards. Corridor entrances flicked past, then crew-access tunnels. The car slowed.

  “We're near the spin-axis,” said Vin. “Oh, listen.”

  Distant pipes and fiddles echoed, from the depths of a utilitarian tunnel.

  “‘The Rocky Road to Dublin,’” said Yoshiko, surprising herself.

  The car began to turn over.

  Yoshiko just glimpsed a rough holo—FREEFALL CEILIDH TONITE—before the car flipped completely, leaving her stomach behind.

  She shut her eyes, and kept them shut until the car had finished dropping through all the levels.

  “We're here,” said Vin. “Are—?”

  “I'm fine.” Yoshiko climbed out, and forced herself to stand steadily. “Really.”

  “The restaurant's just along here.” Vin's lips twitched. “These cars really give me an appetite.”

  “Septor Maximilian.”

  “Sunadomari Yoshiko.”

  They shook hands briefly, across the table.

  “And this is Lori,” said Vin. “My soul-mother.”

  Lori's handshake was firmer, her smile friendlier, than her consort's.

  “So, what shall we have?”

  They spent a few minutes over the menu icons, then silence settled on the table.

  “Do you—?”

  “Was your—?”

  Lori laughed. “You first, Yoshiko.”

  “I wondered whether you enjoyed your trip to Earth.”

  “Too short,” said Lori, glancing at Septor, who said nothing.

  “Fun, though.” Vin looked wistful.

  Septor's voice was heavy with self-importance. “We made a point of getting to know Earthers of every social stratum.”

  Vin glanced up, as though there were something to be seen above Yoshiko's head, and reddened slightly.

  “And some of them became our friends,” she said harshly.

  Septor laughed. The couple seated at the next table looked up.

  “Indeed. It was interesting to see civilization's—” Septor's smile was mocking. “—Our civilization's precursors.”

  A human waiter accompanied by a smartcart walked up, and transferred drinks from cart to table.

  “I'm glad you found Earth interesting, Septor,” said Yoshiko. “I was surprised to hear Fulgor isn't as law-abiding as I'd expected.”

  “We haven't outgrown sensationalist NewsNets, that's for sure.”

  Lori leaned forward, placing a hand on Septor's arm while looking directly at Yoshiko. “Is this your first trip to Fulgor?”

  “I'm going to see my son—”

  A sudden hush descended upon the restaurant. Towards the rear, a privacy booth had unveiled. A lone Pilot stepped out, a formal black cape draped over her jumpsuit.

  “Two in one day,” breathed Vin.

  A wave of silence travelled with the Pilot.

  “She's coming this way.”

  The Pilot stopped at their table. In her taut olive-skinned face, her eyes—black-on-black Pilot's eyes—were glistening orbs of jet, totally sans whites. Shadowed pits, leading to unknown worlds.

  “Professor Sunadomari.” The Pilot bowed low. “I am Pilot Jana de Vries.”

  Yoshiko bowed in return.

  “My commiserations,” added the Pilot, “on your husband's death. He was a fine man.”

  Yoshiko's vision blurred with tears.

  “Thank you.”

  After a moment, Septor cleared his throat.

  “I say, Pilot,” he began. “Could you tell me when we'll arrive on—?”

  Golden fire coruscated across the Pilot's black eyes, flared brightly, then vanished. She turned her gaze on Septor.

  The blood drained from his face.

  The Pilot turned, cape swirling, and left the restaurant.

  Vin stared at Yoshiko. “She talked to you!”

  “It was kind of her.”

  Yoshiko dabbed at her eyes. Stupid to be affected like this, but it had been unexpected.

  I miss you, Ken.

  “You're acquainted with Pilots?” Lori asked, while passing a napkin to Septor, who mopped his now-damp forehead.

  “Both my family and Ken's—he was my husband—worked on their programme.”

  For eight generations, on and off.

  “Very impressive,” said Lori. “Wouldn't you agree, darling?”

  “Ah, yes.” Septor took a deep gulp of wine. “Impressive, yes.”

  “Vin?” said Lori. “Perhaps you might invite Yoshiko to visit us, while she's on Fulgor?”

  “Yes, please! Yoshiko, if you could come, that would be great!”

  The pleading look in her eyes melted Yoshiko.

  “I'd love to.” She couldn't resist adding, “Do you think Jana will be piloting our ship?”

  Vin snorted with laughter at Septor's expression, and even Lori's face was tight with amusement.

  A mounted samurai horseman, his banner floating in an unfelt breeze, reared above Yoshiko's hand. One of her tu-rings was flashing high-priority red.

  She looked around the departure lounge, but it was almost empty, an hour before transit.

  The banner bore an incoming-mail icon. She pointed, and the horseman, one of her NetEnv agents, swirled and broke apart, then reformed in
to Tetsuo's familiar features.

  “Mother. I'm looking forward to seeing you, but I have urgent business to attend to.” His expression was blank, but there was an unsettling edge to his voice. “Perhaps Akira can arrange for a later trip? I'll contact you soon.”

  Yoshiko's thoughts were still whirling when the lounge began to fill. Eager passengers chatting brightly. Holiday atmosphere.

  A migraine began to pulse over Yoshiko's left eye.

  “Are you OK?” A man's voice. Crew-member's blue jumpsuit.

  “I will be.” She looked up. “Oh, Eric. How are you?”

  “Er…Fine.” Eric Rasmussen tugged at his beard, looking concerned. “Are you sure you're OK?”

  “I had an h-mail from my son.” The words flowed from Yoshiko without volition, surprising her. “I'm not sure he wants to see me.”

  “Did he give a reason?”

  “Yes. Well, no. Not really.”

  He stared at her for a moment. “Fulgor's a big world. Plenty of other things to see.”

  “Yes, but—” Her shoulders sagged. “You're right. It seems stupid to turn round and go straight back to Earth.”

  Not to mention the insult to Akira, who had paid for the trip. And Tetsuo could hardly turn her away, once she was there.

  “I just wanted to say—” Eric's voice trailed off. Unexpectedly, he grinned. “I'm glad you dropped in, even on our monkey business.”

  A smile tugged at Yoshiko's lips, despite herself.

  Eric added, “You've brightened this place up, you know.”

  She had noticed it before, in the refectory: that damned twinkle in his eyes.

  “I bet,” she said, “you say that—”

  “—to all the beautiful, intelligent scientists who wander by.” Eric laughed. “Yeah, right.”

  Stop this.

  Yoshiko shook her head, just as a low chime sounded.

  “Time to board.” Eric raised an eyebrow. “If you're going.”

  “I am. Thank you, Eric.”

  “Can I give you a hand with that—? I guess not.”

  Yoshiko hefted the narrow two-and-a-half-metre carry-case.

  “You're a pole-vaulter?” said Eric. “No. Let me guess—”

  “It's a naginata,” she said.

  “That's not rude, is it?”

  “Not the last time I looked.” She smiled. “Go look it up.”

  She gave a sketchy wave, and joined the other passengers crowded in front of the gate. Beyond, a white umbilical led to the waiting mu-space ship.

  Her tanto, in its hardwood sheath, was in a pocket of her suit. Suicide weapon. On a sudden impulse, she called out Eric's name, and hurried back to him.

  “Here,” she said, holding out the sheathed dagger. “I won't be needing this.”

  He started to say something, smiling, then seemed to catch his breath. He took the tanto dagger from her without a word.

  Tetsuo awoke slowly, eyes sticky with sleep, like a child. He turned his head, and sudden pain stabbed into his scalp.

  “Damn it. Uh, command mode. Upright.”

  He groaned as his couch morphed back into a chair, sitting him upright.

  Gingerly, he reached up, tracing the filigreed network of fine wire crowning his head, along to the scab-encrusted inserts into his scalp. Only the soft headrest and nervous exhaustion had allowed him to sleep at all.

  “Daistral.” His voice was a croak.

  Still dark outside.

  He rubbed his face. It was greasy with old sweat, rough with a stubble of beard. He felt awful, all the way through.

  The console beeped, and extruded a tray with his cup of daistral.

  He drank the steaming purple liquid gratefully. It washed away the fuzz from his gums, poured warmly into him, and cleared his brain.

  Last night, he had polarized the cockpit bubble to black opacity. Maybe it wasn't dark outside.

  He sat there, in his warm dark cabin, softly lit by indirect lighting, not wanting to see the world. Part of him wanted to call Rafael for advice, but Rafael might be part of the problem.

  Tetsuo didn't need to access a crystal to recall the beginning of his partially retrieved info: the courier and some unknown other person. The courier he had seen at the Bureau? It could be. And then there was the mention of Rafael.

  All of Tetsuo's troubles came flooding back to him. He was awake now, sure enough.

  He sighed. “Clear membrane.”

  The cockpit bubble grew transparent.

  Bars of roiling purple, interspersed with silver grey. High above, a fluffy-edged gap afforded a glimpse of greenish sky. All around, though, was bicoloured fog. Its purple and grey bands formed a strong Turing pattern, like the pelt of some strange striped carnivore.

  Something moved. A shadow in the fog.

  Tetsuo waited, but there was nothing more. His flyer's defences remained quiescent.

  He finished his daistral.

  After a while, a light shower of rain began to fall, spattering against the cockpit. Within minutes, it had washed the fog away. Then the rain, too, died.

  The air was crystal clear.

  The floor of Nether Canyon was a stippled expanse of rust-red and sugared-mint rock, glistening wetly in the morning sun. To either side, the canyon's immense walls rose up, sheer and vertical, for kilometres. The lime sky was a distant strip overhead.

  As Tetsuo watched, a small family of semitransparent whirling propelloids—each the size of his fist—drifted slowly past.

  The little group travelled onwards, parallel to the canyon wall. Tetsuo's gaze followed them until they were lost in the distance. Then he was alone, once more.

  A stately pavane of life and death: glycoprotein-analogues drifting laterally through a fluid mosaic of phospholipids and protein-like molecules. Yoshiko pointed at a twisted filament, and it grew large as the display zoomed in.

  “Excuse me.”

  In a text volume, the relative atomic concentrations scrolled past, while graphs shifted in a third image. The primary display picked out a molecule and decoded it: hydrogen bonds in startling white, dynamic equations mapping field strengths.

  “I'm sorry.” A harried-looking woman walked right through the display.

  Most interesting of all, the overall-properties map was highlighting a cohenstewart discontinuity—

  “Wow!”

  A small boy, carrying a toy spaceship and a bag of sweets, walked right through a blue alpha helix.

  Stifling a sigh, Yoshiko gestured, and the display shrank to a tiny volume and froze. It had been taking her mind off other things. Perhaps she ought to reply to Tetsuo's h-mail, but what could she say?

  “Put the sweets away, Jason.” The woman was seeing to her son's seat harness.

  The cabin was lavish, every couch equipped with terminal and drinks dispenser. There was nothing more an adult passenger could want. Holding the attention of a seven-year-old boy, though, was quite another matter.

  An attendant appeared beside Yoshiko.

  “Mrs. Sunadomari? This was sent aboard by a station crewmember. For you.”

  It was a small package, plainly wrapped.

  “Thank you.”

  Across the aisle, the boy's mother looked exasperated.

  “I'll be glad to get to the conference,” she said. “When I'm working, I don't have people throwing tantrums.”

  Because, thought Yoshiko, we adults are all so rational and well-balanced.

  The boy's face crumpled into tears. His mother looked stricken at the import of her words.

  Trying not to think of Tetsuo and Akira at that age, Yoshiko killed her minimized display completely, and turned her attention to the package on her lap.

  “Accept ident: input owner name.”

  A toy capuchin monkey sat up amid the tissue-paper lining of the opened box.

  “Accept ident: input owner name.”

  The sound of crying had ceased. The boy, Jason, was staring at the monkey.

  Smiling, Yoshiko
leaned over, holding the monkey out to him.

  “Perhaps he could ride on your spaceship.”

  Jason looked at the forgotten spaceship clutched in his hand, then up at his mother, with an imploring look in his eyes.

  The woman nodded.

  “Say your name,” said Yoshiko, as he took the monkey.

  “Jason Brown.”

  “Ident accepted.” The monkey stood to attention. “Howya doin’, Jason?”

  Jason giggled as the monkey performed a back-flip.

  It was bad form, Yoshiko supposed, to give away a present from someone else. But she didn't expect to see Eric Rasmussen again.

  “How can I thank you?” said his mother. “This trip's been hectic.”

  “I remember how difficult it can be.”

  “But it gets better when they're older, right?”

  “Well…”

  “That's what I was afraid of.” She turned her seat, leaned across Jason, and held out her hand. “I'm Maggie.”

  “Yoshiko.”

  They shook, then returned their seats to the forward-facing position as a warning chimed.

  “Sleepy time,” said Maggie, taking a delta-band from the arm of Jason's seat.

  “Not sleepy.”

  Yoshiko said, “It's a long flight. We need you to make sure the monkey's all right.”

  “Oh, OK. Better sleep.”

  He settled back, cradling the monkey. Maggie placed the band across Jason's forehead. Almost immediately, his eyelids fluttered and he slipped deeply into sleep.

  “That's what makes it worth it,” Maggie said softly.

  A second chime sounded.

  “Sleepy time.” Maggie's grin was, for a second, identical to her son's.

  “See you later.”

  All around, passengers were putting on their delta-bands.

  An overhead display showed the station's coat of arms—its motto, Per Ardua ad Astra—which was replaced with an exterior view of the station itself.

  The station receded from the ship.

  Most of the passengers were already unconscious, but Yoshiko still held her delta-band in her hand.

  The display shifted to a sea of golden space, streaked here and there with crimson. Tiny black spongieform stars were riddled with holes, and encrusted with endlessly branching spiky protuberances.

  Mu-space.

  The display was a work of art. Literally so, for no normal human could see that fractal continuum for real, and survive.