“It’s the Festival. Have you got any idea what they are?” asked Martin.
“If you know anything about it, you should have told the Admiral’s staff. Why didn’t you tell them? Why—”
“We did tell them. They didn’t listen,” Rachel observed.
Vassily visibly struggled to understand. Ultimately, it was easier to change the subject than think the unthinkable. “What are you going to do now?”
“Well.” Rachel whistled tunelessly through her front teeth. “Personally, I’d like to land this lifeboat somewhere near, say, Novy Petrograd, book the honeymoon suite in the Crown Hotel, fill the bathtub with champagne, and lie in it while Martin feeds me caviar on black bread. However, what we actually do next really depends on the Festival, hmm? If Martin is right about it—”
“Believe it,” Martin emphasized.
“—the Navy force is going to quietly disappear, never to be seen again. That’s what comes of assuming that everyone plays by the same set of rules. We’re just going to drift on through, then fire up our motor for a direct landing, meanwhile squawking that we’re neutral at the top of our voices. The Festival isn’t what your leaders think it is, kid. It’s a threat to the New Republic—they got that much right—but they don’t understand what kind of threat it is, or how to deal with it. Going in shooting will only make it respond in kind, and it’s better at it than your boys.”
“But our Navy is good!” Vassily insisted. “They’re the best navy within twenty light-years! What would you anarchists do? You don’t even have a strong government, much less a fleet!”
Rachel chuckled. After a moment, Martin joined in. Gradually their laughter mounted, deafening in the confined space.
“Why are you laughing at me?” Vassily demanded indignantly.
“Look.” Martin hunched around in his chair until he could lock eyes with the Procurator. “You’ve grown up with this theory of strong government, the divine right of the ruling class, the thwack of the riding crop of firm administration on the bare buttocks of the urban proletariat and all that. But has it occurred to you that the UN system also works, and has maybe been around for twice as long as the New Republic? There’s more than one way to run a circus, as I think the Festival demonstrates, and rigid hierarchies like the one you grew up in are lousy at dealing with change. The UN system, at least after the Singularity and the adoption of the planetary unconstitution—” He snorted.
“Once, the fringe anarchists used to think the UN was some kind of quasi-fascist world government. Back in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, when strong government was in fashion because the whole planetary civilization was suffering from future shock, because it was approaching a Singularity. After that passed, though—well, there weren’t a lot of viable authoritarian governments left, and the more rigid they were, the less well they could deal with the aftereffects of losing nine-tenths of their populations overnight. Oh, and the cornucopiae: it can’t be pleasant to run a central bank and wake up one morning to discover ninety percent of your taxpayers are gone and the rest think money is obsolete.”
“But the UN is a government—”
“No it isn’t,” Martin insisted. “It’s a talking shop. Started out as a treaty organization, turned into a bureaucracy, then an escrow agent for various transnational trade and standards agreements. After the Singularity, it was taken over by the Internet engineering task force. It’s not the government of Earth; it’s just the only remaining relic of Earth’s governments that your people can recognize. The bit that does the common-good jobs that everyone needs to subscribe to. World-wide vaccination programs, trade agreements with extrasolar governments, insurer of last resort for major disasters, that sort of thing. The point is, for the most part, the UN doesn’t actually do anything; it doesn’t have a foreign policy, it’s just a head on a stick for your politicians to rant about. Sometimes somebody or another uses the UN as a front when they need to do something credible-looking, but trying to get a consensus vote out of the Security Council is like herding cats.”
“But you’re—” Vassily paused. He looked at Rachel.
“I told your Admiral that the Festival wasn’t human,” she said tiredly. “He thanked me and carried right on planning an attack. That’s why they’re all going to die soon. Not enough flexibility, your people. Even trying to run a minor—and horrendously illegal—causality-violation attack wasn’t that original a response.” She sniffed. “Thought they’d turn up a week before the Festival, by way of that half-assed closed timelike path ‘to avoid mines and sleepers.’ As if the Eschaton wouldn’t notice, and as if the Festival was just another bunch of primitives with atom bombs.”
A red light winked on the console in front of her. “Oh, look,” said Martin.
“It’s beginning. Better strap yourself in—we’re way too close for comfort.”
“I don’t understand. What’s going on?” asked Vassily.
Martin reached up to adjust a small lens set in the roof of the cabin, then glanced over his shoulder. “Can you juggle, kid?”
“No. Why?”
Martin pointed at the screen. “Spine ships. Or antibodies. Subsentient remotes armed with, um, you don’t want to know. Eaters and shapers and things. Nasty hungry little nanomachines. Gray goo, in other words.”
“Oh.” Vassily looked ill. “You mean, they’re going to—”
“Come out to meet the fleet and take a sniff, by the look of it. Unfortunately, I don’t think Commodore Bauer realizes that if he doesn’t make friendly noises, they’re all going to die; he still thinks it’s a battle, the kind you fight with missiles and guns. If they do decide to talk—well, the Festival is an in-fovore. We’re perfectly safe as long as we can keep it entertained and don’t shoot at it. Luckily, it doesn’t understand humor; finds it fascinating, but doesn’t quite get it. As long as we keep it entertained it won’t eat us; we may even be able to escalate matters to a controlling intelligence that can let us off the Bouncers’ hook and let us land safely.” He reached into the bag of equipment he’d dredged out of the locker behind the seats. “Ready to start broadcasting, Rachel? Here, kid, put this on. It’s showtime.”
The red nose floating in the air in front of Vassily’s face seemed to be mocking him.
THE TELEPHONE REPAIRMAN
Sitting in a highly eccentric polar orbit that drifted almost sixty thousand kilometers above the provincial township of Plotsk, the Festival’s prime node basked fat and happy at the heart of an informational deluge. The pickings in this system were sparse compared to some of the previous ports of call on its itinerary, but Rochard’s World was still unusual and interesting. The Festival had chanced upon few primitive worlds in its travel, and the contrast with its memories of them was great.
Now, as the first starwisps departed—aimed forward at new, unvisited worlds, and back along its track to the hot-cores of civilization where it had stopped before—the Festival took stock. Events on the ground had not gone entirely satisfactorily; while it had accrued a good body of folklore, and not a little insight into the social mores of a rigidly static society, the information channels on offer were ridiculously sparse, and the lack of demand for its wares dismaying. Indeed, its main source of data had been the unfortunate minds forcibly uploaded by some of the more dissolute, not to say amoral, fringe elements. The Critics, with their perennial instinct to explain and dissect, were moaning continuously—something about the colony succumbing to a disastrous economic singularity—but that sort of thing wasn’t the Festival’s problem. It would soon be time to move on; the first tentative transmissions from Trader clades had been detected, burbling and chirping in the Oort cloud, and the job of opening up communications with this civilization was nearly done.
Each of the hundreds of starwisps the high-orbit launchers were dispatching carried one end of a causal channel: a black box containing a collection of particles in a quantum-entangled state with antiparticles held by the Festival. (By teleporting the known
quantum state of a third particle into one of the entangled particles, data could be transmitted between terminals infinitely fast, using up one entangled quantum dot for each bit.) Once the starwisps arrived at their destinations, the channels would be hooked into the communications grid the Festival’s creators had set out to construct. No longer limited by the choke point of the Festival’s back channel to its last destination, the population of Rochard’s World would be exposed to the full information flow of the polity it belonged to.
Out toward Sputnik, the Festival took note of some activity by Bouncers. They seemed to be clearing up a small mess: a handful of slow, inefficient ships that had approached without warning and opened fire on the Bouncers with primitive energy weapons. The Bouncers responded with patient lethality; anything that menaced them died. Some small craft slipped by, evidently not involved in the assault; a number of the second wave broke and ran, and they, too, were spared. But for the most part, the Festival ignored them. Anyone so single-mindedly hostile as to attack the Festival was hardly likely to be a good source of information: as for the others, it would have a chance to talk to them when they arrived.
The air in the lifeboat was foul with a stench of sweat and stale farts. Rachel sat hunched over her backup console, staring unblinkingly at the criticality monitors while the rocket howled and rumbled beneath them: while a single output jitter might kill them before she could even blink, it made her feel better to go through the motions. Besides, she was totally exhausted: as soon as they touched down she had every intention of sleeping for three days. It had been fourteen hours since they escaped from the Lord Vanek; fourteen hours on top of a day and a sleepless night before. If she stopped making the effort to stay awake—
“Riddle this interrogative.” The creature on the screen snapped its tusks, red light gleaming off fangs like blood. “Why not you Bouncers accept?”
“I couldn’t possibly place myself further in their debt,” she said as smoothly as she could manage. Neutron flux stable at ten kilobecquerels per minute, warned her implants. A hundred chest X rays, in other words, sustained for four hours during the deceleration cycle. The lifeboat’s motor shuddered beneath her like something alive. Vassily’s hammock swung behind her. He’d fallen asleep surprisingly fast once she convinced him they weren’t going to throw him overboard, exhausted by the terror of four hours adrift spent waiting to die. Martin snored softly in the dim red light of the comms terminal, similarly tired. Nothing like learning you aren’t about to die to make you relax, she thought. Which was why she couldn’t sleep yet—
“No debt for payment in kind,” said the strange creature. “You bear much reduction of entropy.”
“Your translation program is buggy,” she muttered.
“Is so interrogative? Suppose, we. Reiterate and paraphrase: question why you do not attack Bouncers like other ships?”
Rachel tensed. “Because we are not part of their expedition,” she said slowly. “We have different intentions. We come in peace. Exchange information. We will entertain you. Is that understood?”
“Ahum. Skreee—” the thing in the screen turned its head right around to look over its shoulder. “We you understand. Will Bouncers of notify peaceful intent. You part are not of not-old administrative institution territoriality of planet?”
“No, we’re from Earth.” Martin stopped snoring: she glanced sideways. One eye was open, watching her tiredly. “Original world of humans,” she clarified.
“Know about Dirt. Know about you-mans, too. Information valuable, tell all!”
“In due course,” Rachel hedged, acutely aware of the thickening air in the capsule. “Are we safe from the Bouncers?”
“Am not understanding,” the thing said blandly. “We are will notify Bouncers of your intent. Is that not safety?”
“Not exactly.” Rachel glanced at Martin, who frowned at her and shook his head slightly. “If you notify the Bouncers that we are not attacking them, will that stop them from eating us?”
“Ahum!” The creature blinked at her. “Maybe not.”
“Well, then. What will stop the Bouncers from attacking us?”
“Skree—why worry? Just talk.”
“I’m not worrying. It’s just that I am not going to tell you everything you want to know about me until I am no longer at risk from the Bouncers. Do you understand that?”
“Ha-frumph. Not entertaining us. Humph. A-okay, Bouncers will not eat you. We have dietary veto over theys. Now tell all?”
“Sure. But first—” She glanced at the autopilot monitor. “We’re running low on breathable air. Need to land this ship. Is that possible? Can you tell me about conditions on the ground?”
“Sure.” The creature bounced its head up-down in a jerky parody of a nod. “You not problem, land. May find things changed. Best dock here first. We Critics.”
“I’m looking for a man,” Rachel added, deciding to push her luck. “Have you installed a communications net? Can you locate him for us?”
“May exist. Name?”
“Rubenstein. Burya Rubenstein.” A noise behind her; Vassily rolling over, his hammock swinging in the shifting inertial reference frame of the lifeboat.
“Excuse.” The creature leaned forward. “Name Rubenstein? Revolutionary?”
“Yes.” Martin frowned at her inquiringly: Rachel glanced sideways. I’ll explain later, she thought at him.
“Knows Sister Burya. Sister Seventh of Stratagems. You business with have the Extropian Underground?”
“That’s right.” Rachel nodded. “Can you tell me where he is?”
“Do better.” The thing in the screen grinned. “You accept orbital elements for rendezvous now. We take you there.”
Behind her, Vassily was sitting up, his eyes wide.
The Admiral didn't want to board the lifeboat.
“D-d-d-d—” he drooled, left eye glaring, right eye slack and lifeless.
“Sir, please don’t make a fuss. We need to go aboard now.” Robard looked over his shoulder anxiously, as if half-expecting red-clawed disaster to come stooping and drooling through the airlock behind him.
“N-ever surrr—” Kurtz found the effort too much; his head flopped forward onto his chest.
Robard hefted his chair, and pushed forward, into the cramped confines of the boat. “Is he going to be alright?” Lieutenant Kossov asked fussily.
“Who knows? Just show me somewhere to lash his chair and we’ll be off. More chance of getting help for him down—”
Sirens honked mournfully in the passage outside, and Robard winced as his ears popped. Kossov reached past another officer wearing the braid of a lieutenant commander and yanked the emergency override handle: the outer door of the lifeboat hissed shut. “What’s going on?” someone called from up by the cockpit.
“Pressure breach in this section! Doors tight!”
“Aye, doors tight. Is the Admiral aboard?”
“Yes to that. You going?”
In answer, the deck heaved. Robard grabbed a stanchion and held on one-handed, bracing the Admiral’s wheelchair with another hand as the lifeboat lurched. A rippling bang of explosive bolts severed its umbilical connection to the stricken warship, then it was falling—falling through a deliberately opened gap in the ship’s curved-space field, which was otherwise strong enough to rip the small craft apart. Officers and a handful of selected enlisted men struggled to seize anchor points as whoever was in the hot seat played a fugue on the attitude thrusters, rolling the lifeboat out from behind the warship. Then the drive cut in with a gentle buzzing hiss from underfoot, and a modicum of weight returned them to the correct plane.
Robard bent to work on the wheelchair with a length of cable. “Someone help me with the Admiral,” he asked.
“What do you need?” Lieutenant Kossov peered at him, owlish behind his pince-nez.
“Need to tie this chair down. Then—where are we landing? Is there a doctor aboard this boat? My master really needs to be taken to a hosp
ital, as soon as possible. He’s very ill.”
“Indeed.” The Lieutenant glanced at him sympathetically, then his gaze wandered to the somnolent Admiral. “Give me that.”
Robard passed him the other end of the cable, and together they secured the wheelchair to four of the eye bolts that dotted the floor. Around them, the other surviving officers were taking stock of the situation, neatly unfolding emergency deceleration hammocks from overhead lockers and chatting quietly. The atmosphere aboard the lifeboat was subdued, chastened; they were lucky to be alive, ashamed not to be aboard the stricken battlecruiser. The fact that most of the survivors were officers from the admiral’s staff didn’t go amiss; the real warriors remained at their posts, trying valiantly to halt the plague that was eating the ship around them. In one corner, a junior lieutenant was sobbing inconsolably at the center of an embarrassed circle of silence.
The Admiral, oblivious to everything around him, mumbled and coughed querulously. Kossov leaned forward attentively. “Is there anything I can do for you, my Admiral?” he asked.
“I fear he’s beyond our help,” Robard said sadly. He rested a gentle hand on Kurtz’s shoulder, steadying the Admiral in his chair. “Unless the surgeons can do something—”
“He’s trying to talk,” Kossov snapped. “Let me listen.” He leaned close to the old warrior’s face. “Can you hear me, sir?”
“A-a—” The Admiral gargled in the back of his throat.
“Don’t excite him, I implore you! He needs rest!”
Kossov fixed the servant with a baleful eye. “Be silent for a minute.”
“—Aah, arr—we—‘oing?”
Robard started. “Humbly report we are on our way down to the planetary surface, sir,” said the Lieutenant. “We should be arriving in the capital shortly.” Nothing about the rest of the fleet, the disposition of which was anything but likely to arrive in the colonial capital.
“’Ood.” The Admiral’s face relaxed, eyelids drooping.
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