The New Space Opera 2

by Gardner Dozois

  The fighters flashed by, tumbling wildly as they recalibrated their weapon systems. Thrusters flashed and flared. The optimum point arrived.

  One Master Bannerman activated the ultralights while another stared in fascinated horror, dying to see what happened.

  The razee screamed, and both of her screamed with it, fused back into one as a bubble of energy radiated out from the heart of the ultralights, tearing space into ribbons as it went.

  The cockpit walls went black. All the instruments and virtual feeds died in the same instant. Smoke filled the cockpit. She heard Kindred crying out—not in fear or alarm, but crying the same three words that had haunted her all the way to Oza.

  Without questioning the impulse, she found herself praying for the first time that he might be right.

  I can’t die!

  I can’t die!

  I can’t die!

  Her acceleration couch eased its grip the very instant fresh air reached her nostrils. Sobbing with relief, Bannerman sagged forward, eyes blinking in the stroboscope light of the revived instrumentation panels. Her implants located several active streams among the dozens that had once issued from the razee, now filled with noise. A quick glance over the status indicators told her everything she needed to know. Red was the dominant shade. The razee would soar no more.

  Of the fighters and the raider, there were no signs.

  A hand groped for hers and she jerked out of the data, startled.

  “We made it.” Kindred’s voice was raw with relief. “I told you we would.”

  She surprised herself by not immediately pulling away. “We got lucky,” she said, “and we’ll need to get lucky again soon. The ultralights are dead, burned completely out. Thrusters are down to half a percent capacity. We’ll be doing well to hit Oza, let alone land on it.”

  He was unflappable. “That’s all we need. Don’t you see? No matter what the universe throws at us, we’ll come through just fine.”

  She withdrew her hand. “I don’t share your confidence.”

  “That’s because you don’t understand the Structure. You think you do, but you don’t.”

  “So explain it to me.” When he didn’t answer, she dismissed the mystery with an irritated snort. “I thought not. You’re as ignorant as I am.”

  “No, wait. Give me a second. I’m thinking.” He tapped his right index finger on the side of the couch. “Yes, why not? You’re caught up in this now. The only way back to your ship is through the Structure. You have a right to know what you’re getting yourself into.”

  He spoke so seriously, so earnestly, that she braced herself against the back of her chair, as though the revelation might convey a physical impact. When she noticed what she had unconsciously done, she cursed herself for being so gullible. This was what he wanted, to throw her off-balance even further than she already was. Striking when she was weak was a sensible tactic. She gave him credit for trying, even as she hardened herself to resist his web of lies.

  He told her everything he knew. It didn’t take long, and he could tell she didn’t believe him. The story did sound crazy; he had once thought it impossible too, until it had happened to someone close to him.

  Living in or near the Structure tangled people up in time, sometimes. No one knew why, or how. It just happened, and people lived with it. Some found a comfort in it, as he told himself to, now. Until the loop in which he had found himself unraveled—until he was back on Hakham, so he could read out the script and push the button that he had failed to push the first time around—he was untouchable. How could he die anywhere when he knew he would be alive later?

  She said: “You are telling me that you did not, in fact, set those charges to detonate.”

  “No. It was me. Must have been. I just haven’t done it yet.”

  “You’re talking nonsense.”

  “The Structure makes you do that. It’s unavoidable.”

  “Knots in time cannot exist. The laws of temporal entropy forbid such things.”

  “Is that your best comeback?”

  “I don’t need another. What you are telling me is impossible.”

  “So was FTL travel, once. Hell, so was flying! I don’t think the word is in the universe’s dictionary.”

  The ship was nearing Oza’s tenuous atmosphere. Soon, she would be too busy to argue. He guessed that she would keep pondering it, though. Maybe another near-death experience would convince her of his claims.

  She seemed to be thinking along the same lines.

  “If I did try to kill you now, what would happen?”

  “The command would fail somehow. Or you’d die of an aneurism before you could issue it. I don’t know. Do you want to try?”

  “Not right now.”

  “Good,” he said, “because at this moment, I might be the only thing protecting you from dying when we crash-land.”

  Her brown eyes narrowed. They were so dark that in the dim light of the cockpit they looked completely black.

  “Thanks for your concern,” she said, “but your faith would be better placed in my ability to pilot this ship.”

  He smiled. “Either way, I’m looking forward to going home again.”

  Home, she thought, even as she wrestled with the controls of the moribund razee. For all she had studied the Structure and its inhabitants from afar, she had never once thought that people might actually consider it such. Was that, perhaps, why they fought so vigorously to keep it to themselves? Not because of its military or scientific value, but out of love?

  The Guild of the Great Ships was made of clones and avatars, but love was just as powerful a force to them as it had ever been to any human. For the first time, she began to wonder if the campaign to take control of the Structure might prove more difficult than even the Grand Masters had imagined—hypothetically unkillable Terminus agents notwithstanding.

  SACRIFICE

  They came down hard a kilometer from the ruins that had once been Oza topside. Kindred and Bannerman stumbled from the new crater they had made, leaning on each other’s shoulders and brushing themselves down as best they could. The walk to the apparently lifeless shaft wasn’t a long one, but under a diamond-colored sky and with no liquid water anywhere on the planet, it wasn’t one Kindred was looking forward to. He took only a small consolation from the fact that he was back under real gravity again.

  “When we get there,” he said, “let me do the talking. My access codes should still work. Once we’re in, it’s just a matter of hopping from level to level until we get where we need to go.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at the crumpled wreckage of the ship. Her expression was unreadable, but he thought he could guess what was going through her mind.

  That guess was confirmed when she said just one word in reply.

  “Hakham.”

  “Back to your ship.” He nodded. “Also, if the shaft is open, you’ll know I’m telling you the truth.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then you’ll wonder if you’re as good a pilot as you say you are.” He smiled. “You’ll have to be if I’m wrong, because that’s the only way you’ll ever get back home.”

  The Terminus agents stationed at Oza didn’t once question her status. Master Bannerman watched closely for any sign of deception as Kindred walked up to the security cordon hidden deep in the ruins, braving a trio of upraised weapons without flinching and talking his way smoothly into their confidence. He showed no inclination to betray her just yet. She assumed he wanted to prove himself to her first, and that was perfectly in line with her own objectives. She had no doubt that before long his talk of time-loops would be revealed as the fantasy of a very lucky man.

  They entered a dank, stuffy mine, traveling first by wheeled vehicle and then by elevator. The way was only intermittently lit, and they relied on infrared to pick their way when visible light was absent. Strange smells assailed her. Mud and dust soon coated her Guild uniform almost beyond its capacity to clean itself. Far behind her lay t
he antiseptic glamour of interstellar travel. To date, the Structure had proven disappointing and uncomfortable.

  Only when they reached the first of the transcendent shafts did she realize that they hadn’t actually entered the Structure proper. At a sliding, airtight portal, Kindred entered a complex code into an alphanumeric keypad. The portal slid aside, revealing an elevator carriage large enough for thirty people.

  “After you,” Kindred said, waving her inside. “From here on, we’ll make good time, better than that ship of yours. In fact, we’ll arrive before we left. If that doesn’t make you curious, nothing will.”

  He pushed the carriage’s only button, and they stood at opposite sides of the carriage as it began to descend.

  “Descent,” however, wasn’t the right word for what she felt in her gut. They were undeniably moving, but she couldn’t accurately pin down in which direction. Guild training had given her many ways to assess acceleration without instruments. Something about the shaft confounded all of them.

  A wave of dizziness passed through her. With no other warning than that, the carriage came to a halt. When the portal opened and she stepped through, she noticed immediately that the ambient gravity had changed.

  At a five-level stack three transcendent jumps away from Oza, Kindred called the first halt on their journey. He had never been to Shosori before, but he remembered the name from the charts he had memorized and knew some of its basic geography. It was harmless enough, except for newbies.

  “Are you okay?” he asked Bannerman.

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  He knew she was lying. Her expression was too blank. Her eyes and hands moved abruptly and too quickly at the slightest stimulus. Maybe she thought her self-control was impeccable, but he could tell. He’d seen this kind of reaction before.

  “Let’s stop here for a bit.”

  They were in an observation deck that clung to the underside of ceiling made of roughly carved, reddish stone. Below them, visible through a bulging transparent blister, was the surface of a solid world, its gray features obscured by drifts of frozen atmosphere except where deep fissures had been carved by mineral-seeking engines, each as large as a Great Ship. They watched it for five minutes. In that time, the world within the Structure rotated thirty degrees.

  “What do you think?” he asked her.

  “You want me to say that it’s impossible.”

  “That word comes to mind, you have to admit. Something like this, inside a mine—”

  “Is not beyond an engineering solution, however extreme. The Guild of the Great Ships could accomplish it, given the need.”

  “What if I told you that this lump of rock didn’t come from your universe, the one containing the Guild of the Great Ships? Could you manage that as well?”

  She looked at him through eyes wakened from their numb sightseeing. “You say ‘your universe’ as though you are not part of it.”

  “I’m not. My birthplace wouldn’t appear on your maps no matter how far you explored.”

  She waved that away with some of her old fire. “The multiverse is no mystery to us. Cross-continuum jumps will be within our grasp, one day.”

  “Engineering again, huh?”

  “I stake my life on it every time I board the Great Ship.”

  “You’re not on the Great Ship anymore, Master Bannerman.”

  She found his attempts at repartee clumsy but distracting. The ponderous rotations of the captured world below no longer seemed so threatening. This was the Structure, exactly where she had wanted to be for so long. Each “stack,” as Kindred called the named locations they passed through, had a unique character. Some were close and utilitarian, while others were more like giant shopping malls. Occasionally, she detected evidence of earthworks, as would be expected of a mine. Diligently and thoroughly, she recorded every detail for her avatar back at the Great Ship.

  “Shall we get moving again?” she asked.

  “Of course. Adrigon’s next, then Malmelia—and then Estes, where they suck minerals out of the bottom of a planet-wide ocean…”

  The names meant nothing to her, his attempt to awe likewise.

  Between transcendent shafts, they moved invisibly among the crowds. The strangest thing she had seen so far wasn’t the evidence of science far in advance of the Guild’s—for all that she bluffed regarding the architects’ ability to mimic it—but the people who inhabited the Structure. They had passed hundreds of all ages, living and working under artificial lights in halls large enough to hold thousands. They grew flowers. They raised children. If they cared at all about the universe beyond, it didn’t show.

  “This is it.”

  Kindred pressed his palm against the portal ahead of them and spread his fingers wide. The white plastic was inert against his skin. If anything was active on the far side, it neither vibrated nor radiated any heat.

  All the times he could have died meant nothing, now. He had had only to count them down until he reached the loop’s end—which was, of course, its beginning. And then, once he blew the charges and the loop closed, he would be mortal like anyone else, but safely rid of Hakham and the Guild of the Great Ships, for now.

  “What are you waiting for?”

  He didn’t know.

  The strange thing was that his return to the Structure hadn’t touched him as deeply as he had thought it would. The tunnels seemed cramped and crowded to him now; there were no distant horizons, no far vistas. Although every level was different, there was a homogeneity to it all that he could swear hadn’t been there before.

  He couldn’t tell Bannerman. She would think that she was responsible, and he couldn’t have that.

  “Nothing.”

  He keyed in his access code. The doors slid open.

  They stepped inside. The doors slid closed.

  With a hint of movement, they were on their way.

  “Well?” Her silence irked him. “This shaft is supposed to be destroyed, isn’t it?”

  “You don’t understand the technology, Kindred. We might be going somewhere else, or nowhere at all.”

  He nodded and settled back to wait. Words would not convince her. Only the cold, hard evidence of her senses.

  Bannerman’s insides shifted as the carriage came to a halt. Not nerves, she told herself; surely just a side effect of the Structure’s arcane technologies.

  The portal opened. Kindred waved her ahead of him. She stepped into a boxy antechamber with gray walls, floors, and ceiling. A functional space that smelled of abandonment. The air was still and quiet. Kindred’s footsteps as he came up behind her were the only sounds.

  He radiated satisfaction. “Now what do you say?”

  “This proves only that your demolition charges failed to do their job down here,” she said. “Assuming this is Hakham.”

  “Of course it is. If we can get to the surface, you’d see your Great Ship in orbit above. Hell, you could try to talk to yourself, if you wanted to.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “No—unless you remember such a conversation taking place, in which case it’s not only possible; it’s compulsory.”

  A yearning to try filled her, regardless of the apparent absurdity of the notion. To reconnect with her avatar, to see the Great Ship again, both were possibilities she had been preparing to abandon on the other side of the galaxy. She could do more than just say hello, too. She could stop Kindred from setting off the charges and prevent herself from going with Kindred on a crazy odyssey across the stars. She knew the location of Oza now, so there was no need to go through that charade anymore. She had everything the Guild needed right here in her head.

  But she didn’t remember having such a conversation with herself before she left the Great Ship, and the charges had gone off. Those were facts. If Kindred were right and it was truly impossible to change history, what consequences might she inadvertently provoke by trying? The knowledge she had earned might disappear completely, leaving the Guild back w
here it started and her avatars doomed to an ignominious fate.

  “Take me up,” she said. “I need proof, not suggestion.”

  He shrugged and obeyed, apparently unconcerned that—if he was right—the area they were walking into was full of deadly explosives.

  They took a rattling elevator cage up to the next level. He experienced a powerful sense of déjà vu as they went. It seemed a lifetime since he had followed this very path on his mission to blow Hakham topside to pieces. It seemed like yesterday.

  He looked for evidence of the charges, and found them exactly as he remembered them, anchored to stress points and beams where they would cause the most damage. His plan had been to blow the upper layers first, then the shaft itself on a timer, once he had gotten away.

  They stepped carefully through an unlit area, heading for the next elevator. This location rang a definite bell. Something had happened in this place the first time around—but what?

  Bannerman grabbed his arm and hissed into his ear.

  “There’s someone ahead.”

  A figure moved at the far end of the passage, deep in the shadows.

  Acting instinctively, Kindred took Bannerman by the shoulder and put himself in front of her.

  Coherent light flashed once, twice.

  The first shot missed them both. The second caught him low on the left shoulder, just above his heart.

  He fell, remembering too late the two intruders he had surprised in Hakham’s lower levels. Enemy agents, he had assumed, since they had both been wearing Guild uniforms.

  Remotely, as though through a thick glass window, he heard footsteps receding into the distance.

  PARADOX

  Master Bannerman stared after the fleeing figure, shocked into immobility. The man who had shot Kindred was moving quickly through shadows, but she recognized his profile, the planes of his all-too-human face. It was undoubtedly, impossibly, Kindred himself.