Flies from the Amber

by Wil McCarthy

  “Oh. I'm sorry, I didn't know this would bother you. Would you like me to ring off?”

  His face changed. “Oh, no! I... didn't mean you. Anyway, I know what I'll do about this. I'll pray to the God that made me. But nobody wants that advice.”

  Luna grunted in agreement. The Originals were militant atheists, and the society they established on Unua had reflected this fact. Despite some flirtation with the occult by the first and second generations, religion had never quite got foothold in Malhela system. Like fairy tales, it was something you told to children.

  It was nice idea, actually. The cold universe personified as someone to talk to, someone who looked in on you and worried about your problems. Did Jhoe believe in that? Really? His face was earnest behind the screen.

  It melted her heart. Sweet Jhoe. She wished him every happy thought his mind could hold!

  “What?” Jhoe demanded, beginning to frown.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I was just thinking. You just gave me one good idea, though; I'll call my great-grandfather.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Because he's an Original. I bet he'll have some ideas for us.”

  “I don't see your point.”

  She shrugged. “They were explorers. They roamed this planet when it was new, and they never knew what they were going to find next. Centuries ago, I guess, but some... spark of that time must still be with them.”

  “Huh,” Jhoe said. “Maybe. I guess Jack-Jack Snyder does seem pretty spry for a man of his years.”

  “You know him?” Luna asked with surprise.

  “Huh?”

  “Jack-Jack Snyder, that's my great-grandfather. Well, one of them.”

  “Really? I didn't realize. Actually, other than the President and the Director of Fleets, he was the first Malhelan I met.”

  She grinned. “Jumped on you first thing, eh? That sounds like him. Of course, I always had to fight for his attention. When I was little, he had about ninety great-grandchildren. By now I think it must be twice that many.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. Wow. Lots of the births were artificial in the early days, but he really did get around. Six wives, one right after the other. Hey, are we still going out tonight?”

  “Um, I guess so.” Jhoe looked embarrassed.

  Oh, damn, she'd just mentioned marriage and their dinner date in the same breath, hadn't she?

  “Darkness. That, uh, wasn't what I meant.” She kept her tone light. Really, that wasn't what she'd meant. She hadn't even been able to hold things together with Dade, whose voyages carried him no farther than the Centromo. Jhoe's range was considerably farther than that.

  What is this then, dear? Some kind of fling?

  “Okay.” Jhoe's smile was thin, his voice ironic. “Sure. No reason to cancel a date just because...”

  Just because the sky was falling? Just because Malsato was inexplicably throwing eggs, and they might all soon be dead? She shook her head. “You're right. I guess it does seem sort of odd.”

  “Yeah, odd.”

  “Well. Will I see you tonight anyway? For an odd time?”

  “Sure.” Jhoe paused, looking as if he had more to say. His mouth worked, as if it were thinking about trying to form some additional words. Tender words? But nothing came out, and after a few moments Jhoe rang off instead. Blank screen replaced his image.

  “Yeah,” Luna said to the blankness, “me too.”

  ~~~

  “Jack-Jack? It's Luna Shiloh. Korina's daughter, you remember?”

  The old man's face lit up. “Luna, my very favorite. Of course I remember. And how is dear Korina? Still reading tea leaves?”

  “I don't know,” Luna said. “We don't talk much.”

  “Well neither do we, little girl. When was the last time you called here?”

  “I don't know. Fifteen years ago? When was the last time you tried to call?”

  “Ah, you brat. Never tease an old man.”

  “I'll keep that in mind when I meet one.”

  He smiled, and there was brief silence between them. Then: “You want to know about the eggs.”

  She nodded. “You've heard, then.”

  “Oh yes, I got the news this morning. I gave what's-his-name a call, you know, that President fellow. Thought I'd give him a few pointers. But who listens, hey? He was working on a speech. Now that's one I'd like to hear!”

  Luna felt small, talking to Jack-Jack. She remembered sitting in his lap, rubbing against the unshaven bristles of his face... So long ago. Her fingers tried to reach out to the telkom screen, reach out across time and space to stroke her great-grandfather's cheek. It took effort to hold the hand back.

  “What were you going to tell him?” she asked.

  Jack-Jack shrugged, looking suddenly more forlorn than she thought she'd ever seen him. “I don't know. Be brave, keep the peace, that kind of thing. People don't fold up in a crisis, they... sort of come alive. I guess I wanted to tell him that.”

  “Some people fold up.”

  “Yeah, some do. Not many.”

  “I love you, Jack-Jack.”

  Now he smiled again, and his eyes crinkled up in just the way she remembered. “Well. It's been a long time since anyone's said that. I love you, too. I love just about everyone on this dustball.”

  “Yeah.” She found she couldn't meet those jolly eyes. “Grandfather, what are we going to do?”

  “Do? Well, that will depend on what happens, won't it? I'm told the eggs are probably empty.”

  “I hear that, too,” she said, in tone that indicated her precise level of faith in that prediction.

  “Oh, perk up. Maybe they want to be friends with us. For all you know, that's why they're coming out.”

  “And if they don't want to be friends? I mean, they live in a black hole... If they want to do us harm, I don't think we can do much about it.”

  Jack-Jack tipped back his head, and actually laughed at her. “Listen to you! Oh, Luna, you're never helpless. Never. When you run out of options, it just means you've stopped thinking. Okay? Don't stop thinking.”

  She sighed. “You're oversimplifying.”

  “Never. Have you heard of bullfighting? La Corrida? People sticking swords in a cow, waving flags around to confuse it until it bleeds out and collapses. Life is like that, and the one thing age can teach you is to ignore the flags. There's always so much going on in the world, and very little of it actually pertains.”

  “I guess,” she said, with a little more hope. “You really should tell this to the president.”

  “Oh, I will. He'll break down and call me in a few days, and if he doesn't, I'll show up in his office. 'You can't throw me out, I'm the oldest man in the world!'“

  “Typical, typical. I'm at work here. I guess I should go.”

  “You feeling a little better?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I guess I am. Thanks, Jack-Jack.”

  He smirked. “What am I here for? By the way, tell your little Earthman I said hi.”

  “Darkness, do you know everything?”

  “I think so,” he said. “Yes.”

  The telkom screen went dark.

  ~~~

  MANAKA:Pawn to king four. You'd like it here, Tomus. This ship offers a bit more room!

  KREIDER:Pawn to king three. Rockhammer, humph. Have you got drunk with the crew yet?

  MANAKA:Drunk? Ech, Dade's bottle swore me off it. Such a headache it gave me! Knight to king's bishop three. And how goes the quark balancing?

  KREIDER:Slow, and you know it. Bishop to queen three. The job does not go well with only one person working on it. I've tried to teach Dade, but he... well, his own job suits him better than ours does. So, I take it you've heard about this emergence thing?

  MANAKA:Hyperbolic orbits, yes. It surprises me that we realize this so late. But so many things come late, I suppose. I wonder what will happen. Pawn to queen four.

  KREIDER:Always hogging the center. Tsk. Pawn to queen's bishop four
. Do you still believe the time capsule theory? Some of my latest work indicates that if the centrokrist contained more bottom quarks, the gravitic interactions might actually block the transmission of inertia. I mean, if you think backwards, picture inertia as a dynamic quantity acting on a static object...

  MANAKA:The pink centrokrist contains a lot of bottoms, doesn't it? Pawn to queen's bishop three. Do I hear you correctly? You mean to imply that the ellipsoids have shielded their interiors from gravitational acceleration? Blocked, in effect, the tidal stress?

  KREIDER:The pink centrokrist contains too much bottom matter, and we find it all crowded on one side of the vein. If we knew what sort of process had formed these deposits, we'd have an easier time sorting all this out. Oh, pawn to king's bishop four. And yes, you understood my point correctly. If the ellipsoids are hollow, and if they really do shield their interiors from inertial and gravitic interactions, they could contain anything. Anything at all. Even live aliens.

  MANAKA:If you want a formation process for the pink centrokrist, consider a high-velocity impact. Such as, for example, pawn takes pawn at your king's bishop four.

  KREIDER:One of the ellipsoids smashing into the planetoid? No, that doesn't work. How would the centrokrist get so deeply buried in the rock, without vaporizing the whole thing? Pawn takes pawn at king's bishop four.

  MANAKA:You picture a simple event. Let's not make that mistake again, ah? Imagine an ellipsoid smashing into a very large object, shattering it into molten fragments, and melting itself in the process. Can centrokrist form a liquid? Certainly, yes. And could such an event produce the configuration we see? Bishop to king's knight five.

  KREIDER:Hmm. I suppose it could, yes. Chondrite would just come apart into dust, but this matrix is stony-iron, so it would have cohesion after a violent upset. Based on what I know about the centrokrist, I'll try to work out a collision velocity. Standard asteroidal collision models should apply. Uh... knight to king's bishop three.

  MANAKA:Queen to king two. Check. Remember that the material may in fact be metamorphic. A really violent impact could certainly disturb its structure it a little.

  KREIDER:Obviously it disturbed it, Yezu. Something drove the bottom quarks right out of it, slammed them up against one side. Like you have just done to me! King to king's bishop two.

  MANAKA:Knight to king five. Check. That seems like a big assumptive leap, all of a sudden.

  KREIDER:Well, doesn't it make sense? Bishop takes knight. Here, my simulation results have just come through. Good lord, this stuff runs right off the toughness scale. I get an impact velocity of nearly half the speed of light!

  MANAKA:Certainly? You've made no error? Ech, that matches the velocity of the emerging objects! We have found something, my friend. We've made an important connection of some kind.

  MANAKA:Pawn takes bishop. My apologies, Tomus, I forgot.

  KREIDER:Here, look at this! A typical ellipsoid, smashing into a stony-iron planetoid 150 kilometers in diameter... You get tremendous ejections. This could account for all those small centrokrist deposits in the Aurelo and Centromo. But here, look: the object was already liquefied before impact. And hot!

  KREIDER:Rook to king one. Apology accepted. What have we found, Yezu? What does this mean?

  MANAKA:Queen to queen's bishop four. Check. It could simply mean an even more complex event than you've already assumed. Perhaps an initial collision with a smaller body? At any rate, the exact details don't matter so much. What we've found is that at least one of these ellipsoids came to grief before entering the hypermass. Whatever guides them, it does not do so perfectly. I find that significant.

  KREIDER:Hmm. Yes. Perhaps we should contact Mr. Barta with this information. Uh, king to king's knight three.

  MANAKA:Bishop takes knight.

  KREIDER:Pawn takes bishop.

  MANAKA:Damn me for not paying attention! Bishop to king two.

  BARTA:The hell, you say! Explain this file!

  KREIDER:Oh, hello. We thought you might like to know about the accident our little friends have had. Pawn to queen's knight four.

  MANAKA:It troubles me. Queen takes pawn at your queen's bishop four.

  BARTA:You play chess at a time like this? Gentlemen, please! Give me the details of your analysis.

  KREIDER:You know as much as we, Miguel Barta. And you have real computers, as well, so any further progress will likely come from your efforts rather than our own. Pawn to queen three.

  MANAKA:Queen takes pawn at your queen's knight four.

  KREIDER:Pawn to rook three.

  BARTA:Okay. I've elaborated on your simulation a bit. Let me fix a few things and send the results back to you.

  KREIDER:You really needn't bother, Miguel. Trajectories and such don't really lie within our expertise. Just let us know when the show will start.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The captain had taken her thing-face off, so that Miguel could speak, for the second time, with the human face beneath it.

  “Please explain that again,” she said calmly.

  Miguel took a breath, calmed, backed up. “A billion years ago, they had a crash. At least one crash, at relativistic velocity, with most of the debris ejected clear out of the system. The remainder of it forms the centrokrist deposits our passengers came out here to study.”

  “And this worries you? Why?”

  “We avoid accidents like that when we plan our trajectories. Not difficult, right? If the ellipsoids, or whatever controlled them, had planned ahead even slightly, the crash couldn't have taken place.”

  With a thoughtful look, the captain leaned back into the cushions of her couch. Like Miguel, she seemed not entirely at home here, in this rarely-used briefing room. Like Miguel, she seemed a trifle uncertain, operating now well outside her nominal job description. But definitely, she hid it better. Calm, unhurried.

  “What does this, ah, suggest to you, Mr. Barta?”

  His fingers gripped the soft fabric of the couch. He fought the urge to leap from his seat and run around waving his hands. “I don't know. I don't. A nebula used to fill this whole region of space, and they flew through it without scoping a completely safe path. At relativistic velocity! Why the hurry? And then, they dove straight into a pair of black holes, and stayed there a long, long time. Why? Those seem like desperate measures to me.”

  “Running from some kind of danger? I see.” She sat up straighter. “Mr. Barta, you've done an excellent job in the face of extreme difficulty. You make quite a detective. I'm tempted to put your name in for another promotion when we get back home.”

  “Save it, Captain; I plan to retire when we get back. If, I should say.”

  She made the calming gesture again, like a mother or grandmother might with an anxious child. “Don't let this frighten you. Whatever happened to those ellipsoids happened a long time ago.”

  “Not so long, from their viewpoint.”

  She huffed. “Look, if anything lives inside them, which I very much doubt, we will run through standardized alien contact procedures. You've had the course?”

  Of course he'd had the course. The SolCom cadet had never lived who could avoid Unusual Situations 101 and still graduate flight certified. But Unusual Situations had not included reckless ellipsoids caroming up out of black holes.

  “Yes, I've had the course. But Captain, we have some evidence that the centrokrist hull may shield them—”

  “I will handle this, Mr. Barta. Do you trust me so little?”

  “I...” he dropped his gaze. “No. No offense intended.”

  “And none taken.”

  Lin Chelsea had proved herself a cool head, and thoughtful, and responsive to Miguel's needs when they arose. Probably, as she said, the ellipsoids would do nothing, would simply emerge and fly away, lifeless and inert. Introspectia could capture them for study, then, earning Chelsea and her crew the largest science bonus in the history of interstellar commerce.

  And if something else occurred, if the objects proved s
omehow non-inert, she would probably react less wrongly than anyone else he knew.

  “Dead or alive,” Chelsea said, “we will handle them. And I'll want you in a calm and professional mood when we do. Clear?”

  “Yes, clear.” This time he did rise. “I guess I'd better... start preparing.”

  The captain also rose, and clapped a hand on Miguel's shoulder. “Yes. And Miguel?”

  “Captain?”

  “I've sent a message back to Earth, detailing everything we've found so far. In case something happens to us, you understand? We can update it just before the emergence. I think the Malhelans were planning a broadcast, also. Many of us... share some of your concerns. Please keep that in mind.”

  “Thank you, ma'am. I... understand.”

  He saluted, then turned for the door. It WHOOMPED open ahead of him, and he turned down the corridor, and then just before it WHOOMPED closed behind him he caught a glimpse of the captain, still sitting in her briefing couch, a frown of deep worry carved across her features.

  PART FOUR

  EMERGENC(E/Y)

  Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,

  A hero perish or a sparrow fall,

  Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,

  And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

  —Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, 1734.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Scratch the 'inert' theory,” said Beth Lahler.

  Miguel grunted. Object Thirty had just turned on some sort of thruster

  Miguel(1):Hydrogen gas expelled at 0.9998 C

  Miguel(2):M/T  35 kg/s

  and had begun accelerating. Like mad! Like nothing he'd