by Vernor Vinge
Objects in stasis had absolute protection against the outside world. But bobbles eventually burst: if the duration was short, your enemy would still be waiting, ready to shoot; if the duration was long, your enemy might drop your bobble into the sun—and absolute protection would end in absolute catastrophe. Apparently the advanced travelers used a hierarchy of autonomous fighters, flickering in and out of realtime. While in realtime, their processors decided on the duration of the next embobblement. The shortest-period devices stayed in sync with longer-period ones, relaying conclusions up a chain of command. At the top, the travelers’ command bobble might have a relatively long period.
“So they got away?” Hidden by time and interstellar depths.
Pause, pause, pause, pause. “Not entirely. They claimed innocence, and left a spokesman to demonstrate their good faith.” One of the windows brightened into a picture of Tammy Robinson. She looked even paler than usual. Wil felt a flash of anger at Don Robinson. Clever it might be, but what sort of person leaves his teenage kid to face a murder investigation? Lu continued. “I have her with me. We should be landing in sixty minutes.”
“Good. Ms. Lu, I would like you and Brierson to interview her then.” Beyond the windows, forests replaced the black and bright of space. “I want you to get her story before you and Brierson leave for the restart of Town Korolev.”
Wil glanced at the spacer. She was strange, but apparently capable. And she was as powerful a witness as he could get. He ignored Yelén’s auton and tried to put the proper note of peremptory confidence in his voice when he said, “One other thing, Yelén.”
“Well?”
“We need a complete copy of the diary.”
“How—What diary!”
“The one Marta kept all the years she was marooned.”
Yelén’s mouth clamped shut as she realized he must be bluffing—and that she had already lost the game. Wil kept his eyes on Yelén, but he noticed the auton rise: there was more than one bluff to play here.
“It’s none of your business, Brierson. I’ve read it: Marta had no idea who marooned her.”
“I want it, Yelén.”
“Well, you can just stick it!” She half-rose from her seat, then sat. “You’re the last person I want pawing through Marta’s private—” She turned to Lu. “Maybe I could show parts of it to you.”
Wil didn’t let the spacer reply. “No. Where I come from, concealment of evidence was usually a crime, Yelén. That’s meaningless here, but if you don’t give me the diary—all of it, and everything associated with it—I’ll drop the case, and I’ll ask Lu to drop the case.”
Yelén’s fists were clenched. She started to speak, stopped. A faint tremor shook her face. Finally: “Okay. You’ll have it. Now get out of my sight!”
4
Tammy Robinson was a very frightened young woman; Wil didn’t need police experience to see that. She paced back and forth across the room, hysteria sparking from the high edge in her voice. “How can you keep me in this cell? It’s a dungeon!”
The walls were unadorned, off-white. But Wil could see doors opening onto a bedroom, a kitchen. There were stairs, perhaps to a study. Her quarters covered about 150 square meters—a little cramped by Wil’s standards, but scarcely a punishing confinement. He stepped away from Della Lu and put his hand on Tammy’s shoulder. “These are ship’s quarters, Tam. Della Lu never expected to have passengers.” That was only a guess, but it felt right. Lu’s holdings were compact, built both vertically and horizontally. All the advanced travelers could take their households into space—but Lu’s was designed to stay there, to be a home even in solar systems without planets. “You are in custody, but once we get to Town Korolev, you’ll get better housing.”
Della Lu tilted her head to one side. “Yes. Yelén Korolev is going to take care of you then. She has much better—”
“No!” It was almost a scream. Tammy’s eyes showed white all around the irises. “I surrendered to you, Della Lu. And in good faith. I won’t tell you anything if you…Korolev will—” She put her hand over her mouth and collapsed on a nearby sofa.
Wil sat down beside her as Della Lu pulled up a chair to sit facing them. Lu’s black pants and high-collared jacket looked military, but she sat on the edge of her chair and watched Tammy’s consternation with childlike curiosity. Wil cast a meaningful look in her direction (as if that would do any good) before continuing. “Tammy, there’s no way we’ll let Yelén get at you.”
Tammy was upset, but no fool. She looked past Wil at the spacer. “Is that a promise, Della Lu?”
Lu gave an odd chuckle, but this time she didn’t blow it. “Yes. And it’s a promise I can keep.”
They stared at each other a silent moment. Then the girl shuddered, her whole body relaxing. “Okay. I’ll talk. Of course I’ll talk. That’s the whole reason I stayed behind: to clear my family’s name.”
“You know what’s happened to Marta?”
“I’ve heard Yelén’s accusations. When we came out of that strange, overlong bobblement, she was all over the comm links. She said poor Marta got marooned in the present…that she died there.” Frank horror showed on Tammy’s face.
“That’s right. Someone sabotaged the Korolev jump program. It lasted a century instead of three months, and left Marta outside of stasis.”
“And my dad’s the chief suspect?” Incredulously.
Wil nodded. “I saw your father arguing with Marta, Tam. And later she told me how your family wants the people of Town Korolev to join you…Your plans would benefit if the settlement failed.”
“Sure. But we’re not some gang of twentieth-century thugs, Wil. We know we have something more attractive than the Korolevs’ rehash of civilization. It’ll take the average person a while to see this, but given a fair chance they’ll come with us. Instead, Yelén’s forced us to run for our lives.”
“You don’t think Marta’s been killed?” said Lu.
Tammy shrugged. “No. That would be hard to fake, especially if you”—she was looking at Della—“insist on studying the remains. I think Marta was murdered—and I think Yelén is the murderer. All the talk about outside sabotage is just short of ridiculous.”
This was certainly Wil’s biggest worry. In his time, domestic violence was a leading cause of death. Yelén seemed the most powerful of the high-techs. If she were the villain, life might be short for successful investigators. But aloud: “She’s truly broken up over losing Marta. If she’s faking, she’s very good at it.”
Tammy’s response was quick. “I don’t think she’s faking it. I think she killed Marta for some crazy personal reason, and terribly regrets the necessity. But now that it’s done, she’s going to use it to destroy all opposition to the great Korolev plan.”
“Um.” He, W. W. Brierson, might be the cause of Marta’s death. Suppose Yelén conceived that she was losing her love to another. For some disturbed souls, such a loss was logically equivalent to the death of the beloved. They could murder—and then honestly blame the loss on others…Wil remembered the irrational hatred in Yelén’s eyes when he walked into her library.
He looked at Tammy with new respect. She’d never seemed this bright before. In fact…he felt just a little bit manipulated. For all her terror, the girl was a very cool character. “Tammy,” he said quietly, “just how old are you, really?”
“I—” The tear-streaked adolescent face froze for a second. Then: “I’ve lived ninety years, Wil.”
Forty years longer than I. Some daughter figure.
“B-but that’s not a secret.” New tears filled her eyes. “I’d’ve told anyone who asked. A-and I’m not faking my personality. I try to keep a fresh, open mind. We’re going to live a long time, and Daddy says it helps if we grow up slowly, if we don’t freeze into adult mind-sets like they did in the old days.”
The Lu creature gave one of her strange little laughs. “That depends on how long you plan to live,” she said to no one in particular.
; Brierson suddenly realized that it was wishful thinking to regard himself an expert on human nature. Once he had been; now that expertise might be as obsolete as the rest of his knowledge. When he left civilization, life-prolonging medicine had been just a few decades old. At that time, Tammy’s deception would have been almost impossible. Yelén Korolev had had about two hundred years to teach herself to lie. Della Lu was so disconnected from humanity, it was hard to make sense of her at all. How could he judge what such people said?
Might as well continue the sympathetic role. He patted Tammy’s hand. “Okay, Tam. I’m glad you told us.”
She smiled halfheartedly. “Don’t you see, Wil? My dad’s a suspect because we disagreed with Marta. We left to protect the family; my staying behind shows we’re not running from an investigation…But Yelén is. On the way down, Della Lu told me how Yelén wants you back in stasis right away. She’ll be left all alone at the scene of the crime. By the time you two come out, the evidence will be tens of thousands years stale—heck, what evidence there is will’ve been manufactured by her.
“Now, I brought the family records for the weeks before our party. You and Della Lu should study them. They may be dull, but at least they’re the truth.”
Wil nodded. It was obvious the Robinsons had their story together. He let the interview go on another fifteen minutes, until Tammy seemed calm and almost relaxed. Lu spoke occasionally, her interjections sometimes perceptive, more often obscure. It was evident that—in itself—clearing the family name was of little importance to the Robinsons. When they were headed, present opinion would be less than dust. But the family still wanted recruits. Tammy’s parents were convinced that the people of Town Korolev would eventually realize that settling in the present was a dead end, and that time itself was the proper place for humanity. It might take a few decades, but if Tammy could survive the murder investigation, she would be free to wait and persuade. And eventually she would catch up with her family. Her parents had set a number of rendezvous in the megayears to come. Their exact locations were something she refused to reveal.
“You want to pace your lives, and live as long as the universe?” asked Lu.
“At least.”
The spacer giggled. “And what will you do at the end?”
“That depends on how it ends.” Tammy’s eyes lit. “Daddy thinks that all the mysteries people have ever wondered on—even the Extinction—may be revealed there. It’s the ultimate rendezvous for all thinking beings. If time is cyclic, we’ll bobble through to the beginning and Man will be universal.”
“And if the universe is open and dies forever?”
“Then perhaps we and the others can change that.” Tammy shrugged. “But if we can’t—well, we’ll still be there. We will have seen it all. Daddy says we’ll raise a glass and toast the memory of all of you that went before.” She was still smiling.
And Brierson wondered if this might be the craziest of all his new acquaintances.
Afterwards, Wil tried to plan out the investigation with Della Lu. It was not easy.
“Was Ms. Robinson distressed at the beginning of the interview?” asked Lu.
Wil rolled his eyes heavenward. “Yes, I believe she was.”
“Ah. I thought so, too.”
“Look, uh, Della. What Tammy says about Yelén makes sense. It’s absurd for the cops—us—to leave the murder scene like this. Back in Michigan, we would have dropped any customer who demanded such a thing. Now, Yelén is right that my hanging around to investigate the physical evidence would be amateurish. But your equipment is as good as hers—”
“Better.”
“—and she should be willing to let you postpone bobbling long enough to gather evidence.”
Lu was silent for a moment—talking through her headband? “Ms. Korolev wants to be alone for emotional reasons.”
“Hmph. She has thousands of years to be alone before the Peacers come out. You should at least do an autopsy and record the physical evidence.”
“Very well. Ms. Korolev is a suspect, then?”
Wil spread his hands. “At this stage, she and the Robinsons have to be at the top of our list. Once we start poking around, it may be easy to scratch her. Just now it would be totally unprofessional to have her do the field investigation.”
“Is Ms. Korolev friendly towards you?”
“Huh? Not especially. What does that have to do with the investigation?”
“Nothing. I’m trying to find a…”—she seemed to search for the word—“a role model for talking to you.”
Wil smiled faintly, thinking back to Yelén’s hostility. “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t model on her.”
“Okay.” Unsmiling.
If Lu were as smart with gadgets as she was dumb with people, they would make the best detective team in history. “There is something else, something very important, that I need. Yelén has promised me physical protection and access to her databases. I’d like to have your protection, too—at least till we can clear her.”
“Certainly. If you wish, I’ll manage your jump forward, too.”
“And I’d like access to your databases.” Cross-checking Korolev couldn’t hurt.
The spacer hesitated. “Okay. But some of the information isn’t very accessible.”
Wil looked around Della’s cabin—command bridge? It was even smaller than Tammy’s quarters, and almost as stark. A small cluster of roses grew from Della’s desk; their scent filled the air. A watercolor landscape hung on the wall facing the spacer. The life tones and shadows were subtly wrong, as if the artist were clumsy…or the scene not of this Earth.
And Brierson was putting his life in this person’s hands. In this universe of strangers, he must trust some more than others, but…“How old are you, Della?”
“I’ve lived nine thousand years, Mr. Brierson. I have been away…a long time. I have seen much.” Her dark eyes took on that cold, far look he remembered from their first encounters. For a moment, she looked past him, perhaps at the watercolor, perhaps beyond. Then the expressionless gaze returned to his face. “I think it’s time I rejoined the human race.”
5
Some fifty thousand years later, all that was left of the only world empire in history, the Peace Authority, returned to normal time. They were welcomed by Korolev autons, and discouraged from interfering with the bobbles on the south side of the Inland Sea. They had three months to consider their new circumstances before those bobbles burst.
What Marta and Yelén had worked so long for was ready to begin.
Thousands of tonnes of equipment were given to the low-techs, along with farms, factories, mines. The gifts were to individuals, supposedly based on their expertise back in civilization. The Dasgupta brothers received two vanloads of communication equipment. To Wil’s amazement, they immediately traded the gear to an NM signal officer—for a thousand-hectare farm. And Korolev didn’t object. She did point out which equipment was likely to fail first, and provide databases to those who wanted to plan for the future.
Many of the ungoverned low-techs loved it: survival with profit. Within weeks they had a thousand schemes for combining high-tech equipment with primitive production lines. Both would coexist for decades, with the failing high-tech restricted to a smaller and smaller role. In the end there would be a viable infrastructure.
The governments were not so pleased. Both Peacers and NMs were heavily armed, but as long as Korolev stood guard over the Inland Sea, all that twenty-first-century might was about as persuasive as the brass cannon on a courthouse lawn. Both had had time to understand the situation. They watched each other carefully, and united in their complaints against Korolev and the other high-techs. Their propaganda noted how carefully the high-techs coordinated the giveaway, how restricted it really was: no weapons were given, no bobbler technology, no aircraft, no autons, no medical equipment. “Korolev gives the illusion of freedom, not the reality.”
The excitement of the founding came muted to Wil.
He went to some of the parties. Sometimes he watched the Peacer or NM news. But he had little time to participate. He had a job, in some ways like his of long ago; he had a murderer to catch. Unless something seemed connected with that goal, it drifted by him, irrelevant.
Marta’s murder was a major piece of news. Even with a civilization to build, people still found time to talk about it. Now that she was gone, everyone remembered her friendliness. Every unpopular Korolev policy was greeted with a sigh of “If only Marta were alive, this would be different.” At first, Wil was at the center of the parties. But he had little to say. Besides, he was in a unique—and uncomfortable—position: Wil was a low-tech, but with the perks of a high. He could fly anywhere he wanted; the other low-techs were confined to Korolev-supplied “public” transportation. He had his own protection autons, supplied by Della and Yelén; other low-techs watched with ill-concealed nervousness when those floated into view. These advantages were nontransferable, and it wasn’t long before Wil was more shunned than sought.
One of the Korolevs’ fundamental principles had already been violated: the settlement was physically scattered now. The Peacers had refused to move across the Inland Sea to Town Korolev. With dazzling impudence, they demanded that Yelén set them up with their own town on the north shore. That put them more than nine hundred kilometers from the rest of humanity—a distance more psychological than real, since it was a fifteen-minute flight on Yelén’s new trans-sea shuttle. Nevertheless, it was a surprise that she yielded.
The surviving Korolev was…changed. Wil had talked to her only twice since the colony’s return to realtime. The first time had been something of a shock. She looked almost the same as before, but there was a moment of nonrecognition in her eyes. “Ah, Brierson,” she said mildly. Her only comment about Lu’s providing him protection was to say that she would continue to do so also. Her hostility was muted; she’d had a long time to bury her grief.