by Tim Pratt
“Which do you believe?” Ibn said.
Stephen considered. He liked to answer Ibn seriously and accurately, because Ibn always extended the same gravity to him. “It depends on how many drugs I’ve taken. Certainly when I take sacraments with my people, I feel the boundaries of my self disappear, and I connect to something greater than myself. As a materialist and a medical doctor I know those feelings are due to biological and chemical changes in my brain. That doesn’t make them feel any less wonderful, though. In my lucid moments… I think that ‘God’ is best defined as a creative force that makes changes to the universe, directed toward the betterment of those beings capable of imagining the future. Our sacraments – the drugs – and the resulting feeling of connection to other people, and to the divine, and frankly the occasional cuddle pile, is just a pleasant way to remind myself of my place within the context of a whole.”
Ibn tapped his forefinger against his chin. “I think I understand. My second question then: where do the Axiom fit into your concept of God, if God is the collective mind of all thinking beings?”
Stephen scowled. “They’re a fucking brain tumor.”
Ibn nodded. “And you are a doctor. You will do your part to cut out that tumor.”
“Yes. For as long as I have the strength. I’ll probably die in the process. I’m surprised we survived this long. But it’s meaningful work.” That work was the only thing Stephen had to live for, really, since his entire congregation had died on Meditreme Station… and frankly, the fight against the Axiom was a bit of an abstract thing to live for. He wasn’t sure how long he’d hold out, with just that spiny, spiky task to fuel him.
“I am sorry I am leaving the fight behind,” Ibn said.
Stephen waved his hand. “Don’t be. There are different ways to provide support. Having other people out there who know about the Axiom is valuable. I was going to ask if you’d be willing to safeguard the knowledge of what we’ve learned so far. Fighting the Axiom in secret makes sense, for now, but if something happens to my crew, it’s vital that others know the threat we face. Callie has put some plans in place for that eventuality, of course, but multiple backups are best.”
“Of course. It is the least I can do.” Ibn grimaced. “Very nearly literally.”
Stephen chuckled. “If I’d been frozen for half a millennium, and awakened on a nightmare alien space station, I wouldn’t have conducted myself half so well as you. You’ve been through enough. You deserve such peace as you can find.”
“This… Jovian Imperative? That’s where I’m going? I don’t understand the structure of the solar system now. In my day, it was just Earth, and a few scattered moon bases, all ruled by the One World Emergency Government.”
“Earth is still ruled by the One World Government, which grew naturally out of the system you remember – they’re just a bit less panicked these days.”
“They don’t have authority over Jupiter?”
“They wish. Earth and the Imperatives are allies, but not the friendliest ones. The OWG is far more closely aligned with an independent Luna, and Mars, which is also its own nation-state. Mercury is barely populated, but supplies power for much of the rest of the system. Those bodies make up the Inner Planets Governing Council, a coalition with a common currency and set of laws, but varied cultures. They’re in charge of everything from the sun to the asteroid belt… except for Venus.”
“Venus isn’t inhabited?” Ibn said. “There was talk of building floating cities there someday, in my day.”
“It’s inhabited all right, but humans aren’t welcome. Some of the first Liars that humans met, centuries ago, traded us some of their technology in exchange for permanent rights to live on Venus. They don’t talk to us, and when we send probes, they never come back. We’re not sure what they’re up to there, if anything.”
Ibn grunted. “That’s not terrifying at all. What about beyond the asteroid belt?”
“These days? The Jovian Imperative rules it all, despite a couple of the moons occasionally declaring independence or holding non-binding referendums to secede. Earth may be the seat of humanity, but Jupiter is arguably more important.”
“Why? Jupiter can’t be habitable. The storms, the radiation…”
“You’d be surprised where humans can live these days, with access to Liar technology, but yes, Jupiter itself doesn’t have much of a population. They’ve got one advantage, though: the Imperative controls the wormhole bridge that allows access to the other colony systems in the galaxy, so they’re an economic and cultural power on a par with the inner planets, despite having fewer natural resources. The Imperative is a classic port city, in some ways – closest to the bridge, taxing everything that passes through, with first pick of imports from all the other colony worlds. Though if anything ever happened to the bridges, the Imperative would find themselves starving before long.”
“Is this Imperative a nice place to live?”
Stephen considered. “Depends on where you are. The storm cities floating in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter itself are remarkable, but they’re the playthings of the impossibly rich – palaces with views of the titanic forces whirling underneath. Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa are all well built up and heavily populated, with their own individual cultures. Io is settled mostly by immigrants from Mars, and they’re one of the moons constantly trying to declare independence, so as a result, the rest of the Imperative makes life hard for them – I wouldn’t recommend settling there. Beyond that, there are smaller outposts on other moons, and space stations that are city-sized themselves. Ilus, on Ganymede, where we’re going, is reckoned to be one of the great cities of the system, possibly of all the colony systems, host to a thriving series of domes and underground caverns. You could do worse as a place to begin, and from there, you can go back to Earth, or to any colony world.”
“Are you from Ganymede?”
Stephen shook his head. “I was not born in the Imperative, and it’s not the home I chose. I was born and educated on Earth, and spent most of my adult life in territory held by the Trans-Neptunian Authority. The TNA used to be the biggest player from the orbit of Neptune out into the Kuiper Belt. It was a corporation that acted like a government, and made lots of money mining the countless icy planetesimals on the edges of the system. There was a definite frontier aspect to the TNA – it was the place you came when all else failed, a place of high risks and high rewards. With the TNA gone, the seat of the corporation destroyed by the truth-tellers, everything is still in flux, but the Jovian Imperative has never lacked territorial ambition, and the word on the Tangle is they’re trying to gain all the mining rights the TNA had, and may build a successor to Meditreme Station. There’s just too much money to be made on the outskirts, too many trillions of tons of valuable minerals, not to mention water ice, to be mined. There’s a power vacuum, and someone will fill it, whether the Imperative or someone else. It won’t be the place it was, though. The home of my heart is gone.”
“I am so sorry for your loss,” Ibn said.
“Thank you. Losing my congregation… that was hard. I’m hoping to attend services on Ilus, and I’m sure that will give me some comfort, but it won’t be the same. Would you like to join me?”
“I appreciate the offer, but the sacraments you take are haram – intoxicants, forbidden by my faith.” He smiled. “I’d invite you to my services, which Shall assures me are still held, but I fear you would find it dull.”
“As long as it gives you comfort and offers you meaning, my friend,” Stephen said. “That’s all any of us can hope for, and more than many of us get.”
Chapter 5
The Golden Spider wasn’t always called the Golden Spider. According to the records on the pirate base, they’d named it the Inevitability of Death. Callie supposed that name was intended to frighten potential enemies, but given the poor condition of the vessel, it sounded more like a promise about the ship’s own imminent demise. The ship was a freighter, originally, with some gu
ns stuck on it here and there as aftermarket additions, but it was much patched and battered. Ashok, with the help of Shall’s repair drones, had done their best to undo the decay caused by years of slovenly maintenance and “good enough” repairs on the part of the pirate mechanics. The ship was, at least, reliably spaceworthy now, though she wouldn’t want to take it out into deep space or enter it in the Araboth Regatta. It was good enough for a trip to Ganymede, though.
The Golden Spider’s interior was mostly bare metal, scuffed plastic cladding, and shiny new metallic caulk. Nearly every curve and corner sported the bulging, fungal-looking brown growths of spray-and-set insulation Ashok had used to seal a million rattling, whistling holes throughout the interior. Ideally, every compartment of a spacecraft could be made airtight, so a single hull breach wouldn’t kill everyone, but the pirates, unsurprisingly, had believed in living dangerously – or lazily, which amounted to the same thing.
Callie sat in the cockpit, keeping her eyes on the screens because the navigational system had a tendency to glitch, as they cruised toward Ganymede. Drake and Janice had opted to stay home, floating in the White Raven and enjoying themselves in the Hypnos, and Callie hadn’t objected. She was adequate behind the controls, though she lacked the intuition, elegance, and quick thinking under pressure that made Drake such a fantastic pilot when the going got heavy or violent. She wouldn’t have minded some heaviness or violence. They were going as fast as the ship’s abused Tanzer drive could take them, and the trip wasn’t a long one by system standards, but the tedium still chafed.
Especially since there was an alternative. They had a wormhole bridge generator on the White Raven, allowing instantaneous travel to any point in the galaxy – they could have jaunted from Glauketas to Ganymede in under a minute. Their bridge generator was the only such drive in all of human space, a bit of salvaged Axiom technology that could revolutionize life for everyone if it could be reproduced… except that, soon after revolutionizing life, it would end life, because the Axiom security systems would notice a bunch of new sapient creatures popping up all over the galaxy from tiny wormholes, and wake from their slumber long enough to kill everyone. The use of such engines was forbidden even among those Liars who were still secretly loyal to their ancient masters and had access to Axiom technology, because with such an engine, they could go anywhere. People with that kind of mobility might disturb the slumbering Axiom, or disturb the millennia-long projects with which the old aliens hoped to reshape, or transcend, or outlive the universe.
Callie had a magic door she couldn’t walk through: it was too dangerous to use the bridge generator to go someplace as thickly inhabited as the Jovian Imperative. Someone would see them appear out of nowhere, and want to know how they’d done it. So they had to go the slow route.
“Approaching Imperative space,” Shall murmured. Or, rather, a budded-off, limited copy of Shall’s artificial consciousness murmured. The Golden Spider’s computers weren’t sophisticated enough to house a full copy of his mind, but it was still useful to have even a reduced version of him on board, monitoring communication channels and making sure the ship stayed cobbled together properly. Even if he wasn’t as good a conversationalist as usual.
“Good.” Callie double-checked the fake transponder. The pirates had a handy little gadget that could spoof various ports of origin and ship names, so they could glide into civilized parts of the solar system without being immediately fired upon, much like ancient maritime pirates had falsely flown the flags of other nations to take their victims unawares. As far as any Jovian Imperative authorities scanning them were concerned, the Golden Spider (née the Inevitability of Death) was a small freight-hauler called the Bloedworst, registered to a chemical processing corporation on Titan.
“That’s Saturn!” Elena said over her headset, and Callie smiled at her enthusiasm.
“What, you’ve never seen Saturn before?”
“We kept well away from gravity wells when we set out in the Anjou,” she said. “Oh, wow. Look at the rings.”
Callie turned on her viewscreen and tried to see the familiar scene with fresh eyes: the pale yellow gas giant, tinged with orange, surrounded by those admittedly majestic glittering rings. From here, the whole was stately and beautiful, though up close the rings were whirling rivers of ice, a torrential spin of matter ranging in size from dust particles to space glaciers bigger than her ship. There were mining vessels in there too, whipping alongside the larger chunks, harvesting ice. The dark shapes of mining platforms drifted in the gas giant’s atmosphere, like leaves floating on a pond, sucking up raw material to feed the fusion reactors that drove the system’s Tanzer drives, and provided for most of the other energy needs in the Imperative. Several of Saturn’s moons were visible against the backdrop of the planet too. There were certainly enough of them, more than sixty, and Callie couldn’t remember all their names; some were too small to be useful, and even some of the larger ones were still wholly undeveloped. Saturn and its satellites marked the outer edge of absolute Jovian Imperative control, though the Jovians had extended tendrils out to Uranus and, lately, even into the orbit of Neptune and beyond.
“There’s Titan! Do people live there?”
“It’s one of the more populous moons, yeah. Titan has a nice thick atmosphere, so it’s not too cold by local standards, which makes settlement easier. There are lots of domed bubble cities on the surface.”
“Why not stop there instead of going all the way to Ganymede?” Elena said.
Callie hadn’t told Elena about her plans to attend her own funeral yet – it was an awkward subject, since it involved her ex – but fortunately there was a different, and equally true, answer. “Titan isn’t the nicest place in the solar system. The wormhole bridge in this system is tethered to Jupiter, so Jupiter is the center of everything out here. Culture, technology, high society, low society, arts, entertainment, commerce. Saturn is rich in resources, but the Jovian Imperative uses Saturn and its moons as an industrial base. Think chemical plants, processing centers, mining towns, as compared to restaurants, night clubs, museums.” She paused. “Also, there’s liquid methane on the surface of Titan. Lots of it. No matter how good the air filtration systems are, well… If Robin thought Glauketas smelled like farts, she would not enjoy visiting Goya.”
“Goya?”
“The capital of Titan. Sometimes affectionately called the ‘rose on the shitheap,’ but one rose doesn’t make much difference in a setting like that.”
“Ah. So Saturn is sort of like New Jersey to Jupiter’s New York.”
Callie frowned. She’d heard of New York – it was a common setting in historical fiction, like Rome and Constantinople and Paris – but… “What’s New Jersey?”
“New Jersey! Just across the river from New York, but a million kilometers away culturally? Butt of endless jokes? Their state bird is an inferiority complex?”
“Huh,” Callie said. “Before my time. It’s probably part of the Eastern Inundated Area now. They do scuba tours to look at the submerged ruins.”
“Ugh. The future is the worst. Nobody gets my jokes.”
“Truly you bring us the wisdom of the ancients.”
“Ancients, huh? I am young and vigorous. You’re the one who tapped out last night.”
Stephen cleared his throat. “This is not a private channel, Elena.”
There was a long pause as Callie suppressed laughter.
“Crap. Sorry about that,” Elena said. “I’m still getting the hang of the comms.”
“It’s fine,” Robin chimed in. “Go ahead and remind me of my horrible loneliness. I haven’t had sex in five hundred years is all, but who’s counting?”
“I’m sure you’ll make new friends on Ilus,” Callie said. “We’ve got a long stretch ahead of us before we get to Ganymede, so keep yourselves occupied as best you can. We can do family dinner tonight if people want.”
“I miss the Hypnos,” Robin said. “The crappy little immersive media goggles
here just don’t compare. Totally convincing virtual reality is the only non-terrible thing about the future. Uh, present company excepted.”
“You haven’t seen our time at its best,” Stephen rumbled. “Being abducted by sadistic alien space monsters and pretending to be dead for months inside an asteroid are actually fairly unusual pursuits.”
“As long as there are bars. There was nothing to drink on Glauketas but crates of triple sec and crème de menthe! You can’t even mix those without getting a whole orange-juice-and-toothpaste combo.”
“It’s probably hard to stock a bar adequately when you depend on robbing passing supply ships,” Elena said. “Still, you’d think they would have had more rum on board. If only for the sake of tradition.”
Callie tuned them out, glancing over the course Shall had calculated to Ganymede. The Golden Spider was following it well enough so far, despite its tendency to gradually list starboard. Now that they were sailing past Saturn and its satellites, there wasn’t much of interest until they reached Jupiter. After the destruction of Meditreme, the rescue on the Axiom station, and helping Lantern stage a coup and take over the local cell of truth-tellers, Callie had been ready for some down time… but she’d overdosed on idleness. It felt good to be doing something again. At least this voyage was a voyage toward something.