Great five-limbed spider things crawled along webs in a forest of ancient plants. Much bigger feathered dinosaurs sauntered toward him, moving faster than he could quite grasp. These, too, were the Bowl’s Builders’ children. They ruled the Bowl, and they were angry. He tried to run, but there was something wrong with his leg. It hurt.
He twitched violently and opened his eyes.
The sounds of SunSeeker, the Bussard ramjet colony ship, were all around him. They were still under thrust, then, decelerating into Glory system. The light was too bright, but he could recognize the ship’s tiny medical center. A giant five-limbed spider with a misshapen head looked at him through an open door, then turned away. Hey, they’d revived Anorak.
His left leg was gone, and the stump was attached to machinery.
He was strapped down on an operating table. A man and a woman were chatting technobabble as they worked on something … on his leg … way over there. The man was Leon Somebody, only recently awakened from the cold. The woman he didn’t know.
The woman looked around and saw him on his elbows, eyes open. “Mr. Kammash? Are you awake?”
“Let’s hope not,” Cliff said. “Where’s the Bowl? I was on the Bowl.” Again. He and a dozen other explorers had been trapped on the Bowl for nearly a year. Two had died. Some had stayed behind on the Bowl, to form a colony, but Cliff had thought he’d escaped.
“The Shipstar? It’s following us by about four months,” she said. “The Bird Folk are letting us do the exploring. That’s all I know. I was still iced four days ago.”
He nodded at what she was working on, hiding fear. “Artificial leg?”
“It’s your own leg, Mr. Kammash. Don’t worry. Everything is going according to specs. I’ve done this before, something like it. We’ve printed you out a femur and regrown tissue around it. You’re ready for reattachment. That’s going to take hours; we have to match every vein and artery and capillary. I advise you be anesthetized. What do you think?”
“Definitely,” Cliff said. He didn’t remember any more.
* * *
Redwing looked at both of them for a long moment. Cliff was moving carefully, limping a little. Beth was hovering near him, ready to catch him if he fell. They settled in bridge seats.
Redwing had already delivered his compliments and was reluctant to begin with business. He would never tell them that he had damn near shat himself when the grav wave burst wrenched them. He could see the effect in the Longview scope: a sudden flexing of the craft, despite its high tensile strength, carbon fiber core. It was a miracle that their hull breaks were small enough for the self-sealing webs to fix. That didn’t save the fusion core, but Cliff and the bots could get that back up in a month or two.
Their horrendous return trajectory, with no maneuver room, had worn him down. He hated being unable to do anything except wait like a catcher in a baseball game, ready for the incoming fastball, with lives hanging on it.
He breathed deeply and nodded to Zhai, who was still a bit rocky from her warm-up. “I hope you don’t get used to this level of drama.”
Quiet chuckles; good. “Zhai, report on the Artilects.”
She gave them an eye-rolling smile. “They’re embarrassed. They think they should’ve understood that two-planes method of grouping the black hole orbits around their primary. It exploits an antenna effect. They tracked Beth and Cliff and had their orbiting holes timed so they’d send a powerful burst just as they passed in front of the antenna’s max.”
“An act of war,” Redwing said dryly.
“We knew they didn’t like us,” Cliff said. He was sitting carefully, with his newly reattached leg stretched out in front of him.
Beth snorted and took some time to drink some coffee. Her point made, she smiled. “Maybe it was just a warning?”
“We’ve come dozens of light-years,” Cliff said. “Lost people, risked lives. We’re going to explore this damn system, whatever it takes.”
Redwing nodded. He had estimated that Cliff, wounded, would speak for a hard-line position and save the captain the trouble. Good.
Zhai added, “That five-second burst of grav radiation used the holes’ spins, orbital speeds, and masses to tune the waves’ frequency and amplitude. A well-thought-through assassination attempt. Be warned.”
Redwing waved the discussion away. “Another discovery, this time by the Diaphanous. Daphne reports that there’s a species—she calls them that—of Diaphanous around the black holes. Seemed to be warning us off.”
Blinks, open mouths. “And they’re willing to talk further.”
Beth said distantly, “Of course. They’re perched out here at the most dense part of the star’s bow shock. Feeding on it. That’s where they get the energy to manage black holes that weigh in with planetary masses. Gad, what a system.”
“Yeah,” Cliff said wryly, “and who built it? Just to send a message we mere electromagnetic newcomers can’t pick up. I think what tore up my leg was a grav wave obscenity.”
Nods all around.
* * *
Redwing recalled that when he was young—several centuries ago, he realized with a start—battles were close up and physical. Breeches slammed shut, a hard jerk on a lanyard sent an artillery round arcing into a blue sky, delivering pain at the other end of a parabola.
Here, wrinkles in space-time were weapons. And what else?
He peered out at the dwindling bow shock region as they braked steadily along its lengthy paraboloid. Vastness, hard to grasp with a lowly primate mind.
He allowed himself a drink, the faux wine the autochef made, reminding him of jug zinfandel he had in a college that was probably dust now. He did not need it badly, but it was just right this evening, and the first swallow was like a peek into a cleaner, sunnier, brighter world.
They were like mice dancing among elephants out here. Immense beings were calling the tune. Or perhaps singing their own grand symphonies.
The perspective was huge beyond experience, true. He preferred to think of it as Wagner, without the music.
FIVE
HELIOS FREEHOLD
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find,
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas
—ANDREW MARVELL
Redwing studied the image Beth had sent back from their grav wave expedition. It traced plasma wave emissions, revealing the bow shock SunSeeker made—a brilliant way to shed momentum, as they snowplowed through the Glory system’s own stellar plasma ramparts. The Glorians couldn’t miss such a fire in their sky.
He pondered. No need to hoist an electromagnetic signal flag, then—though he had the Translator Artilect send a standard SETI-style introduction signal. Show your flag. Spaceflight was indeed like seamanship here, in a tenuous ocean of night.
Viviane knocked and he barked, “Enter!”
He had cultivated a bulldog persona, now that they were reviving—he disliked the resurrecting term since they weren’t dead in cold sleep—more crew now. When they swelled to hundreds, approaching a thousand—the “colonizing” phase, if they ever got there—he would need distance, hierarchy. Even commanding a few dozen in the initial exploration would be hard without strict methods. This was humanity’s first contact with an advanced intelligence, and consistency of approach was essential.
Viviane entered in light ship uniform but he couldn’t resist—he swept her up in a deep kiss. “Ah!” escaped him, and then he stepped back, adding—rather pathetically, he thought to himself—“Thanks for reporting.”
She laughed. “I won’t be reporting that!”
“Uh, no. Look, I’m reviewing the new ’cast from Mayra at the Bowl, wanted you to hear.”
“Aye aye.” She sat demurely on his one extra chair, a flimsy wire frame.
He called up the wall screen, which was showing billowing veils of pearly vapor at Victoria Falls. A flicker, and there was a simple wood-
frame office with a view of high clouds skating near the Bowl rim.
Mayra Wickramsingh looked aged. Redwing still found that surprising, though he knew that was foolish, seventy-two years since their last hug. What he should have noticed first was that she was happy. She wasn’t just smiling; she burbled.
“Mayra Wickramsingh calling from Helios Freehold on the Bowl. Hello, Cap’n Redwing! It was good to see your face, and good to know you’ve been thawed successfully. By now your updates will be nearly eleven months out of date, given the current lightspeed lag between the Bowl and SunSeeker. The Bowl is closing on your position, decelerating even as you are. We will arrive in your vicinity five months after SunSeeker does.
“Pursuant to your latest message, we’re veering the Bowl to come somewhat closer to Excelsius and Glory. We’re sending the course correction. Of course, the Ice Minds were afraid of impacts from the local Kuiper belt. Now you tell us it’s not there. It would be amazing if Glory has used all that mass for construction.
“Of course, we dare not come too close. Mass grows thicker going inward.…”
All this ran as voice-over for diagrams. He watched superposed tidal ripples, shown in red waves, as the Bowl coasted along a future path. Huge as it was, massive as several Jupiters, the Bowl was still a fragile shell the size of Sol’s inner solar system, with the driving star at its center. The Ice Minds didn’t want tides interfering with the structure. The stretching stressed the Bowl, squeezing it off its spinning, round shape. That drove waves around the already high-tension struts that framed it, creating oscillating groundquakes.
Mayra threw more smooth moving curves on the star projection. “The Folk showed me the trajectory in detail. We’ll cross closer to the inner system, but we won’t slow down without an invitation. Course numbers are attached.”
Viviane said, “How can they slow at all?”
Redwing waved a hand. “A metaphor. They can ease up a bit on the jet—how, don’t ask, something with the Diaphanous. But you don’t brake a star easily. Its enhanced magnetic bumper is a half-light-year across, sweeping up plenty of plasma, but still, the interstellar plasma hitting it is like a leaf falling on a race car.”
Mayra went on, “As for that, I’m always curious—have you further messages from Glory? Those early communications we both got seemed ominous.”
Mayra’s face rippled, replaced by distorted cartoons in weird colors: a massive alien creature with too many weaponlike appendages, kicking the bejesus out of DC Comics’ Superman. Then a tentacled monster tearing Jesus himself apart. Glory minds seemed to think the Bowl was run by the humans who had sent all those television shows. And that humans liked cartoon heroes. Maybe that was all their eavesdropping antennas could make out? Or a preference for visual messages?
The Glorians’ own image-message clearly meant “Go away.”
Redwing said, “They didn’t want the Bowl visiting. Maybe they’re fragile, too—this binary system looks tricky to keep running right, with tidal stresses and all. So the Bowl stays away. We hoped SunSeeker would look like less of a threat.”
Mayra continued, “You’ll be wondering about the Freehold.”
There were more visuals, lots of them. Baby pictures fanned by, then thousands assembled for a group photo. “I’ve attached names. Doubt you’ll want them all, but what the hell. Our grandchildren are becoming adults.”
Fields of green farmland. Half-grown forests carved by white-water streams. “The land the Bird Folk have allotted us is a tremendous gift, enough for scores of generations, a plot near the rim, about an Earth grav, about the size of Asia. We won’t run out soon, anyway. We’re rural, we don’t make much machinery—printouts, I mean—but there’s trade with the other species.” Pictures of the Sil and humans working on a structure like a twisted helix, finger snakes doing up the joints with orange laser jolts.
“Of course, we’re a little wary.” More visuals: the Bowl as seen from space—nearly a hemisphere, Sol’s erstwhile little brother star at its center, jetting a plume of silver plasma into a yawning circle at the Bowl’s bottom. Zoom in: damage near the opening, relic of a fire the size of moons if not worlds. That signature was damage done by SunSeeker during the Quarrel, partly repaired. “The Ice Minds are in better charge of the Bowl—I hear they got the Folk in line with some pretty brutal methods. Still, they favor our little human colony. But”—a wavering twist of her mouth—“I don’t think the Bird Folk forgive quickly. They’re slow to make these repairs. Maybe just careful. Maybe.”
Mayra sat back. “Meanwhile, we have tightbeam laser comm from Earth, attached. Kinda irksome. I don’t think I described our situation badly, but some Alzheims in the United Nations misinterpreted me anyway. The human colony is not in charge of the Bowl! It’s not hominids triumphant here! Jeez…”
She gave an irked smile. “We have good, but pretty damn slow, communication with the Ice Minds around the Bowl’s back. Orders come from them. They dole out orders, and the Bird Folk step to it. From their convoluted lingo—those Translator Artilects are getting better, thank God—the Ice Minds think if we get tidal stresses by loitering around near Glory, it’ll damage their frozen-in ‘mind links’ as they call them. I dunno what ‘mind links’ really are, but then, that’s what makes them inscrutable.”
Mayra gave a glance at her notes and sipped some tasty coff. It was always hard to keep the right tone in these messages; Redwing had sent plenty of them to Earthside, knowing a generation or two would pass before anyone heard them, and it brought on an uneasy, eerie feeling.
“So the UN wants things we don’t have, and frankly, we don’t want to give them some of what we’re learning.” She twisted her mouth again, this time in scorn. “I don’t trust this UN Chairman Ishmael Gordon. He wants info on how to make Bowl-style miracles. Most of that, the Bird Folk and the Ice Minds both refuse to give me—not that I’d send it, or anything too powerful.”
She shrugged. “Oh sure, some things, I sent. Unreasonably strong materials are common here—neutronic stuff, the Bowl backbone struts—that’s okay, I sent that. Energy sources easy to use in war, maybe not ever, I’d think. I’ll leave that to you, Cap’n!” A merry laugh. “I’m just a lieutenant commander here, y’know. Won’t do things above my pay grade.”
Viviane paused the talk. “You heard any of this before?”
Redwing gave her one of his patented insinuating gazes. “Some. Pretended the noise problem in transmissions precluded sending detailed plans.”
“Ha!” Viviane started the report again. “Smart call. Even on tightbeam, our signal is visible across all the inner solar system. Too many ears.”
Mayra continued, “That gamma gun the Folk are so proud of, no. There’s one not far off, sitting on the rim, ferocious ugly thing. They used it on a vagrant stony asteroid years back, and whammo!—big fireworks. Other tech—eugenics, gene tampering—are what the Bird Folk are really good at. They edit themselves, to fit their environment. Ingenious! I don’t want ever-smiling Gordon to have that. He’d make … um, not just soldiers. Sent some wants in human genomics, f’instance. Ugh! I keep wondering how you would design a child to clean out a drainpipe.”
Images flickered by about all this. Three sparks against starscape. “The Bowl corsairs are near Excelsius, maybe eight months out. We don’t hear anything from them. Three ships, about SunSeeker size.”
Her face brightened. “What else? You know I married Fred Ojama—waaay back now. Three children, four grandchildren. Beautiful! Fred and I raised some thawed children, of course. All that’s in the attachments. There’s a message from Bemor for Bemor Prime; you won’t need that yet, I’d guess. Messages from the rest of us, too.
“We have telescope views of Glory and its moon. They’re different sizes and luminance, but the wobble suggests they’re about the same mass. Clues wanted! You’ll be in Excelsius’s Oort cloud by now, and learning a lot. Keep us informed. We’re all counting on you: our standing with the Ice Minds depends on what you c
an find for us, Cap’n.”
She gave a snappy salute. “We eagerly await your next communication.”
Viviane said warmly, “You must’ve managed your crew well at the Bowl. I’ll have to review your methods.”
Redwing liked this but kept his face blank. “I lost some on the Bowl.”
A shrug. “Goes with the game. But you inspired loyalty that’s lasted over seventy years.”
“Thanks. One of the downsides of being captain is nobody ever compliments you.”
She gave him a wicked grin. “Oh, I’ll do more than that.”
SIX
DOUBLE WORLDS
The thin but luminous line between the two worlds looked at first like a processing error fragment—but, no. The display turned slowly, gracefully. The straight line was an immense construct. A thicker segment to the right brimmed with blue-green twinklings.
“It’s a double planet system,” Cliff said. “Damn! Hard to see how we and Earthside missed that.”
“Easy,” Redwing said. “In retrospect, anyway. We were seeing the system edge-on. The orbit around the star is in the same plane as this orbiting pair. So we saw a blend of spectral signatures from both worlds. They swing around in a week or so. Makes it easy, when your observing time is days, to blend them together.”
They rustled uneasily. He could barely get four people in his cabin, with Viviane sitting on a foldout. Redwing wanted to keep this away from the bridge, where other crew could overhear.
Beth nodded vigorously. “Plus there’s that strange, well, construct. The straight line between the planets. I had the Astro Artilect scan it at high resolution. It’s got a bigger biosignature than the planets themselves.”
Cliff stood restlessly and pointed to the two dots hovering in air over Redwing’s work desk. Specks of blue-white and gray, waltzing about each other. A thin straight line between them. “Our Pluto and its moon Charon are double planets by standard astro definition—they orbit a spot that’s between both. Their barycenter.”
Glorious--A Science Fiction Novel Page 5