Timelike Infinity

by Stephen Baxter

  A mouth, whale size, opened moistly.

  "My God," Harry breathed. "It's you, isn't it? We're looking out through your face."

  "I couldn't think of any other way to be sure we were identified properly. Don't worry: the Virtual is all show; it's not even as sentient as you are. It repeats a five-second phrase of greeting, over and again."

  "So how will they hear what it has to say?"

  "Harry, the Virtual is two miles high," Poole said, irritated. "Let them lip-read!"

  Harry swiveled his head, surveying the nostrils, the cablelike hairs above the cabin, skin pores the size of small asteroids. "What a disgusting experience," he said at last.

  "Shut up and watch the show."

  Now there were ships all around the camouflaged Crab. Poole recognized Jovian Navy ships that bristled with weapon ports, science platforms open and vulnerable, even one or two inter-moon skitters that should surely never have been allowed so close. Many of the larger craft followed the same basic design as the Crab, with drive unit and living quarters separated by a stem; from this distance the ships looked like lit matchsticks, scattered through space.

  "How do you think the men from the future will react to us?" Harry asked with sudden nervousness.

  Poole, glancing across, saw Harry chewing a nail, a habit he remembered from a distant childhood. "Maybe they'll shoot us out of the sky," he said maliciously. "What do you care? You're tucked up in bed on Earth, well away from any danger."

  Harry looked at him reproachfully. "Michael, let's not go over that again. I'm a Virtual, but I have my identity, my sense of being."

  "You think you do."

  "Isn't that the same thing?"

  "Anyway, I doubt if we're in any danger," Poole said. "The future people haven't made any attempt to use weapons so far; why should they now?"

  Harry nodded grudgingly. "True." After the future ship had settled into its orbit around Jupiter there had been several attempts by Jovian ships to approach the craft. The future humans hadn't responded, or fired on the Navy ships; they'd simply run away, faster than they could be tracked.

  "Maybe they haven't any weapons," Harry said.

  Poole pursed his lips. "That's possible, I guess. They do have their superdrive, though."

  "I know there's speculation that could be some kind of hyperspace drive," Harry said.

  "Maybe. But if that's true we've no idea how it works. It's not possible to extrapolate from existing technologies, the way I speculated about singularity technologies; a hyperdrive would represent a quantum leap."

  "Maybe it's not a human invention. Maybe it's alien."

  "Anyway, I don't think we're in any danger of being fired on; and if they want us to come in they'll not run away."

  "How reassuring," the Virtual murmured.

  Now the last few layers of craft peeled away before them, the GUT-drive fire-sparkles sliding aside like scared insects.

  The future craft was revealed, like a fragment of landscape emerging through a layer of cloud. The Crab's drive died at last, and Poole's Virtual, mouthing its idiot words of greeting, loomed over a disk of green Earth a quarter mile wide. To Poole it was like looking down from an aircraft. He could clearly make out the ring of ancient stones at its center, like gray-brown scars against the greenery. A belt of anonymous-looking dwellings encircled the stones, and beyond the belt grass grew as in some surrealist's vision, all the way to the edge of the world; the green of it clashed in his eyes with the purple-pink of Jupiter, so that it was as if the craft were encircled by a scar of indeterminate color.

  Close to the rim Poole made out a splash of metal, a scarred crater in the grass. Could that be a boat from the Cauchy?

  Sparks of light, like entrapped stars, were sprinkled over this floating fragment of Earth. And here and there Poole could see tiny, insectlike forms crawling across the landscape. People? He imagined faces upturned in wonder to his own vast, smiling mouth.

  Briskly he scanned the lifedome's instrument displays, watching data on the lifeboat's mass — about that of an asteroid — and its gravitational configuration, radiation characteristics chatter in.

  "I've seen pictures and I've read about it," Harry said, "but I don't think I really believed it until now."

  "It looks more fragile than I expected," Poole murmured.

  "Fragile?"

  "Look at it. Why build a timeship under a clod of earth like that, with so little protection... unless, perhaps, you wanted to hide what you were doing."

  "They can run, but they can't fight," Harry said.

  "Yeah. Maybe these aren't the heroic, super-powered gods from the future we anticipated after all. Maybe these people are refugees."

  Harry seemed to shiver. "Refugees from what?"

  "Well, at least they haven't fled from us yet. Come on; let's get to the boat and see if they will let us land."

  Chapter 7

  MICHAEL POOLE BROUGHT the Crab's boat down near the grassy lip of the craft from the future, close to the wreckage of a lifeboat.

  Poole, followed by the Virtual of his father, walked out onto a green plain. For a moment he felt disoriented. Beneath his feet there was grass, the blades coarse enough for him to feel through the soft soles of his boots; globes the size of his fist hovered eight feet above him, giving off a Sol-like yellow warmth; and toward the center of the disk-craft a concentration of the globes produced a cozy, Earth-like island of light. There was even a hint of blueness about the layer of atmosphere over the disk of land.

  But above him — like some immense roof over creation — hung the banded clouds of Jupiter. It took a conscious effort not to cringe from that lowering sky.

  "You know," he said to Harry, "I found it quite hard to step out of the boat. I feel naked, standing here."

  "I know what you mean." Harry took a deep, theatrical sniff. "But the air smells as good as the tests showed it to be. Why, you can even smell the grass growing." He bounced on his toes. "And near Earth-normal gravity, as we estimated from orbit."

  "Quit showing off," Poole grumbled. "It's hard to understand how anyone could have the guts to ride through time clinging to this damn thing." He thought of Berg huddled against this ground as the broken exotic-matter walls of the wormhole hurtled past her, and he felt an unfamiliar stab of protectiveness. Damn it, Berg could look after herself as well as anyone he'd known — certainly a lot better than he could himself — but nobody deserved to be put through such an experience.

  His protectiveness began to fade to an uncertain guilt, as he wondered if he ought to hold himself responsible, if indirectly, for the chain of events that had resulted in this.

  He watched Harry walk out of sight around the Crab's boat; the craft, a cylindrical lump of metal still frosted from the chill of space, sat on this plain of grass as incongruous as a bullet on an altar cloth.

  "My God," Harry called.

  Poole followed his father. Harry stood, hands on hips, surveying the wrecked lifeboat they'd seen from the Crab.

  The boat had been sliced like a ripe melon. The laser strokes through the hull were paper-sharp — almost pleasing in their clarity and neatness — and Poole could see how the interior of the craft had been scorched and melted, so that interior partitions had softened and flowed toward the soil.

  "Well, it's no ordinary wreck," Harry said. "And look." He pointed to an intact hull panel. "See the registration?"

  "It's from the Cauchy. Harry, this is Miriam's boat. It has to be." A kind of helpless panic surged through him. "What the hell's been done to her?"

  "Nothing, Michael. I'm all right. See?"

  Poole whirled at the sound of the deep, slightly hoarse, and desperately familiar voice. He saw all of her as if in a blur — the tough, lively face, the thatch of cropped hair, eyes that looked soft with tears. Without willing it he found her in his arms. Miriam was a few inches taller than Michael, and her slim body, encased in a coarse, pink jumpsuit, was tense for a moment, though her arms encircled his back; and
then she softened, and the length of her body pressed against his. He buried his face in the soft warmth of her neck.

  When he was able he released her, held her shoulders, and peered into her face. "My God, Miriam, I thought you were dead. When I saw the lifeboat—"

  She smiled, her lips thin. "Not very friendly of them, was it? But they haven't done me any harm, Mike; they just" — now the stiffness returned — "they just stop me from doing things. Maybe I'm getting used to it. I've had a year of it now..."

  "And the journey through time? How was that?"

  Her face seemed to crumple, before she regained control. "I survived it," she said.

  Poole stepped away from her with a trace of embarrassment. He was aware of Harry standing close beside him, but kept his eyes averted from Harry's face; he was two centuries old, and he was damned if he was going to put up with any more fatherly affection. Not right now.

  There was a woman with Miriam, he saw now: as tall as Miriam, slightly scrawny, her thin, bony face young-looking and pretty — except for a dome of a shaven head, which Poole found it hard to keep his eyes away from. The woman regarded him steadily. Her pale-eyed gaze was somehow disturbing; Poole saw the naiveté of youth overlaid with a kind of blank uncaring.

  Harry stepped forward to the girl and held out his arms. "Well, Michael got his welcome; how about me?"

  Michael groaned inwardly. "Harry—"

  The girl swiveled her head to Harry and took a neat step back. "That would be pleasant if it were possible, sir," she said, her face solemn.

  Harry grinned and shrugged theatrically. "Are my pixels showing again? Damn it, Michael, why didn't you tell me?"

  Berg leaned close to Poole. "Who's the asshole?"

  "Would you believe, my father?"

  Berg screwed up her face. "What an embarrassment. Why don't you pull the plug? He's only a Virtual."

  "Not according to him."

  "Michael Poole." Now the girl, having extricated herself from Harry, was facing Poole. Her complexion was quite poor, the skin around her eyes bruised-looking and tired. Poole felt himself drawn to the weakness of this girl from the future — such a contrast to the high-technology superbeings he'd imagined in his wilder moments. Even the single-piece coverall she wore was, like Miriam's, of some coarse, cheap-looking artificial fabric.

  "I'm Poole," he said. "You've already met my father."

  "My name is Shira. I'm honored to meet you," Her accent was modern-sounding but neutral. "Your achievements are still famous, in my day," the girl said. "Of course we could not be here to meet you without your Interface project."

  Berg cut in sharply, "Is that why you let them land, instead of blowing them out of the sky?"

  "We would not have done that, Miriam Berg," Shira said. She sounded vaguely hurt.

  "Okay, but you could have cut and run with your hyperdrive, like you did from the other ships—"

  The word hit Poole like a slap to the face. "They do have a hyperdrive?"

  Berg said sourly, "Sure. Now ask if she'll let you inspect it."

  Harry pressed forward and pushed his young face close to the girl's. "Why have you come here, to our time? Why has there been only one message from this craft to the rest of the Solar System?"

  "You've many questions," Shira said, holding her hands up before her as if to ward Harry off. "There is time to answer you at leisure. But please, you are our guests here; you must allow us to receive you into our hospitality."

  Harry pointed at the sliced-open wreckage of the Cauchy lifeboat. "Some hospitality you've shown so far."

  "Don't be crass, Harry," Poole said, irritated. "Let's hear what they have to say." He turned to the girl and tried to sound gracious. "Thank you, Shira."

  "I'll take you to my home," Shira said. "Please follow me." And she turned and led the way into the interior of the earth-craft.

  * * *

  Poole, Harry, and Berg trailed a few paces behind Shira. Harry's Virtual eyes flicked everywhere as they entered the loose maze of single-story, gray-walled buildings that covered the central section of the craft.

  Poole tried to keep from touching Berg, from grabbing her again as if he were a boy.

  As they walked Poole had the odd sensation that he was stepping into, and then climbing out of, shallow dimples in the grass-coated earth; but the area looked level, as far as the eye could see. The length scale of the unevenness seemed to be about a yard. Covertly he watched Shira as she led them through the little village; she walked gracefully, but he noticed how her stance, too, rocked backward and forward from the vertical by a few degrees, as if she were negotiating invisible potholes.

  Harry, of course, sailed a fraction of an inch over the grassy surface.

  Harry leaned close to Berg and whispered, "She looks about twenty-five. How old is she really?"

  "About twenty-five."

  "Don't kid me."

  "I'm serious." Berg ran a hand through her wire-stiff crop of hair. "They've lost AS technology... or, rather, had it taken away from them. By the Qax."

  Harry looked as if he couldn't believe it. "What? How can that have happened? I imagined these people would be far in advance of us... That was part of the thrill of Michael's time-interface experiment in the first place."

  "Yes," Poole said grimly, "but it looks as if history isn't a monotonic process. Anyway, who are the Qax?"

  "She'll tell you," Berg said grimly. "She won't tell you much else, but she'll tell you about the Qax. These people call themselves the Friends of Wigner."

  "Wigner?" Poole asked. "Eugene Wigner, the quantum physicist?"

  "As far as I know."

  "Why?"

  Berg shrugged sadly, her bony shoulders scratching against the rough material of her jumpsuit. "I think if I knew the answer to that, I'd know most of it."

  Poole whispered, "Miriam, what have you found out about the gravity generator?"

  Berg looked at him. "Do you want the detail, or just a précis?"

  "A précis will do—"

  "Diddly squat. They won't tell me anything. I don't think they want to tell anybody anything. Frankly, I think they'd prefer I wasn't here. And they certainty weren't enamored when I smuggled out my signal to you."

  "Why me?" Poole asked.

  "Partly because I thought that if anyone could figure out what's going on here it would be you. And partly because I thought that you had a better chance than anyone else of being allowed to land here; yours is about the only name from our era these people know. And partly—"

  "Yes?"

  Berg shrugged, on the edge of embarrassment. "Because I thought I needed a friend."

  Walking beside her, Poole touched her arm.

  He turned to the Virtual. "Harry, these invisible dips in the landscape—"

  Harry, surprised, said, "What dips?"

  "They're coming about a yard apart," Poole said. "I think they're caused by an unevenness of a few percent in whatever's generating the gravity in this place."

  Berg nodded. "I figured out that much. We must be climbing in and out of little gravity wells, right?"

  "Harry, tell me if the dips are consistent with a distribution of point masses, somewhere under the surface in the body of the craft."

  Harry nodded and looked unaccustomedly thoughtful.

  "What does he know?" Berg asked.

  "I'm not asking him," Poole said patiently. "I'm really asking the boat. Miriam, Harry's like a camouflaged terminal to the boat's AI; one of the main reasons — no, the main reason — for bringing him along is that the future folk might find him easier to accept than a packful of lab equipment."

  Harry looked pained, but he kept "thinking."

  They reached what was evidently Shira's "home," a conical teepee ten feet tall. There was an open triangular entrance; smiling, Shira beckoned them in. Poole ran a fingertip over the edge of the doorway. The dove-gray material of the teepee was rigid, vaguely warm to the touch — so not metallic — and felt more than sharp enough to c
ut flesh.

  Two of the fist-sized light globes hovered near the roof of the teepee, casting softened double shadows; they bobbed in response to random currents in the air like paper lanterns. The inner walls were blank of decoration — they bore the same dull dove-gray sheen as the exterior — and the floor area, fifteen feet across near the base, bore a single piece of furniture, a low, hard-looking bed, and what looked like thick rugs, or perhaps scatter cushions.

  They stood around awkwardly. Interestingly, now they were inside the teepee Harry seemed to be having trouble with his resolution; his face and limbs crumbled into sugar-cube-sized pixels, and then congealed once more.

  Shira bade them sit, and left them.

  Stiffly, Berg and Poole pulled a couple of the cushions to the center of the floor and sat, a few inches apart; Harry made a show of sitting on the bed, but the resolution was so poor that from time to time he broke up into such a disparate hail of pixels that Poole could see right through him, to the gray wall. Poole laughed. "You look terrible," he said.

  "Thanks," Harry said, his voice indistinct. "It's the material of the walls; it's blocking the signal from the boat. What you're getting is scattered through the doorway."

  "What about the gravity wells?"

  Harry nodded, his face furred with pixels. "You were right. The dips are consistent with point masses, ten million tons each, set out in a hexagonal array a yard under the surface we stand on... Here comes Shira."

  Shira floated through the doorway, smiling, bearing three plates on a tray. "From our kitchens. I'm sorry there's nothing for you," she said to Harry. The Virtual's reply was lost in a defocused blur — mercifully, thought Poole.

  Poole, Shira, and Berg gathered in a circle on cushions in the center of the teepee. The light globes, clearly semisentient, dipped closer to their heads, casting an incongruously cozy light over the meal. The globes didn't seem to be aware of Harry, though, and drifted through his head and upper chest; Harry, stoical, ignored them. Poole wasn't hungry but he used the plain metal cutlery Shira handed him to cut into the food curiously. The food was hot. There was something with the fiber of a white meat, and a thick green vegetable like cabbage, soft as if overboiled. Shira poured a clear, sparkling drink from a bottle into small blue beakers; sipping it, Poole found a sweet, mildly alcoholic tang, like a poor wine.