Interchange

by Daniel M. Bensen

  The pipe was empty. No, it had some dirt inside, drifting up and out. Little sparkling specks. Daisuke put his thumb over the hole, plugging it, controlling what he could.

  Ice, doubloons, and dead animals flew out into space. So did Daisuke and Moon.

  The physicist’s eyes were open now, but he didn’t seem to see Daisuke. Moon howled, his face compressed around the hole of his mouth. He might have been screaming in despair, but the sound coming through the suit radio was laughter.

  Daisuke shook him. Although with nothing to brace himself against, the motion was more like doing one-handed pushups. “Moon! Professor Moon! Dohyun!”

  “Daisuke! Where are you? Shit!” That was Anne. Daisuke couldn’t see her.

  “Anne. I’m all right.” Junction and its sun swung crazily around them as he and Moon tumbled. “My suit is not broken. Moon, is your suit broken? Anne, are you all right? We are…” he tried to control his breathing, “…falling.”

  Anne cursed again. “I can see that. Okay. What do I do? How do I solve this?”

  “Anne?” Farhad said over the radio. “What’s going on? What happened? Did Moon open the pipe?”

  And then, in an entirely different tone, Farhad’s voice said, “Come in. Come in, Moon. Come in, Daisuke.”

  ***

  “Oh right,” said Anne. “You.”

  She was maybe a quarter of the way up the tether, all four limbs wrapped around it as it pulled her toward the wormhole like a huge, contracting rubber band. That would be great if her fiancé wasn’t spinning off into space, an increasingly ridiculous distance away, the target of a flying, talking, hungry mountain.

  Anne fought panic. She had to think. Observe. If she turned her head, she could see the sparks of the two missiles on their way to intercept Daisuke and Moon. Anne had several theories as to why, but maybe this time she had an easy way to test them.

  “Hey,” she said. “Hey you. Mountain-ship. Why did you fire missiles at us? Are you the Mountain-ship? Or the Zookeepers? One of those rocket-animals? Are you some other animal? Some kind of sit-and-wait ambush thing, with a radio lure, evolved to eat explorers? Or are you actually Farhad and I’m just going mad up here?” She was babbling.

  The response wasn’t much better. “You? The Zookeepers?” It switched to Farhad’s voice. “Come in! To.” And back to hers. “The mountain-ship? One of-anima-other animal d-wait a radio-l? Are you-ing mad up here?” And Daisuke: “I’m all right.”

  Moon made a disgusted noise. “This is ridiculous,” he said. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, and I’m a human who speaks English.”

  Anne stared at the gray pyramid rising between her and Junction. Was there even a message behind that gibberish? A mind? Would it be worth her time to imagine that she was talking to someone? Here she was again, in that corridor of mirrors. How could one intelligence ever know for certain it wasn’t just talking to itself?

  “Oh shit,” she said. “This is the purpose of Junction.”

  “Anne?” It was Farhad. “What do you see? Is there some solution?”

  Anne waved a hand at the blue planet hanging in front of her. “This planet isn’t someone’s ruined zoo. We’re not the conquerors here, or even the looters. We’re the specimens!”

  Someone was trying to talk over her, but Anne didn’t let them. Or it, as the case might be.

  “Remember the toymakers and the cavaliers and the coatls? Almost intelligence. Not quite something you could talk to. And their concentration increased as we got closer to the mountain. They were pulled there. We were pulled here!”

  “You think we were destined to come here?” Moon asked. For once, his voice contained no hint of sarcasm.

  “Are insects destined to fall into a drop trap? No. You bury a little plastic cup with a sieve on the top, and bugs of the right size fall into it. We went up the Howling Mountain, got in the capsule, rode it through the hole-worm and the wormhole.” She watched the ship grind out another revolution. “And now here comes someone to collect us.”

  Her own voice answered her. “The mountain-ship? Of the Nightbow in the capsule, the hole-worm and the wormhole.” The mountain’s voice switched to Moon’s: “Portals!” and back to hers: “The Howling Mountain. There’s a planet out here. Of Junction.”

  “I think it agrees with me,” said Anne.

  “What are you suggesting, Anne?” Farhad asked. “Do you think this…this mountain-ship will collect you and put you safely back on Junction?”

  “Well, biologists do sometimes put the animals they trap back where they found them,” Anne said, “if they don’t take them to the lab.”

  “Or kill them and dissect them on the spot! No. No, do not allow the mountain-ship to collect you,” Farhad said, as if he had any say in the matter.

  “Okay,” said Anne. “Okay. Let me think. There would surely be easier ways to kill us, if that was the purpose of the mountain-ship. It makes much more sense if those rockets really are meant to push us gently into—”

  “Its mouth?” Moon said.

  “Come in! Come. Its mouth.”

  “You’re not helping,” Anne told the ship.

  “Anne, it’s all right.”

  “Mountain-ship, would you shut up?”

  “Anne, I said that,” said Daisuke. “It is all right. Moon and I will test your hypothesis for you. The rockets will pick us up. And you can climb back to Junction. You can get help for us. Right?”

  Anne looked up the tether. She might be able to climb this rope, find some way past the foam cloud, and climb up the hole-worm’s digestive tract to make it back to the surface of Junction.

  “Wait just a minute, what sort of help can I get?” she said.

  “Anne, I think he’s right,” that was Farhad. “You have my word—”

  “Shut up, both of you! You’re trying to manipulate me into leaving you, Dice, and I won’t do it.” Her hands shook as she fumbled around her waist, searching for the carabiner that attached her to the tether.

  “It’s better for two people to die than three, right?” said Daisuke.

  A shudder climbed Anne’s body. She’d been trying not to think about death. Could she get herself captured by the mountain as well? Or, if she was wrong, get blown up by its missiles, or just fall forever through space.

  “You have my word. Push us, mountain-ship! Your hypothesis for you. The rockets will pick us up.” The mountain-ship played back one of Anne’s sobs too.

  Anne took her hands away from her belt and put them back around the tether.

  “Don’t give up,” said Daisuke, but his voice was hollow. Was that the sound of someone losing hope? Anne tried to hold on to her own. She pulled the tether through her hands, sliding herself ‘up’ toward the wormhole and its bolus of frozen mucus.

  “There’s got to be something,” she said. “Daisuke, Moon. Do you two have any way to come back to me?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  A cough. “Reaction mass,” Moon said. “A whole planet’s atmosphere worth of gas.”

  “Are you all right, Moon?” asked Daisuke, or possibly it was the mountain-ship.

  “Shut up. Take your thumb off the end of my pipe…no, wait!”

  “Wait!” echoed the mountain-ship. Then, eerily, “No.”

  Anne stiffened, but nothing happened. As far as she could tell, the two men were still spinning away below her.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  Moon swore under his breath. “What should have happened was the pipe should have rocketed away from Daisuke’s hand as soon as he unstoppered my pipe. Instead, the portal must have shut down.”

  “Why did it shut down?” Daisuke’s voice trembled.

  “There’s no air around us, obviously,” said Moon. “The portals don’t work unless there’s breathable air
on both faces.”

  Anne breathed a sigh of relief.

  “All right,” Farhad said. “Let’s not do anything before we’ve all agreed on it, right?”

  “And while we’re waiting, the missiles will hit us,” Moon said.

  Anne looked and found them. “They’ve flipped over again,” she said. “They’re burning away from you.”

  “Yes, I can see the plumes,” said Moon.

  Anne raised her eyes and saw what he meant. The plume of her own missile was like a little sun, growing quickly.

  “Slowing down to match velocities with us? Maybe they do intend to pick us up gently. Maybe they do intend to pick us up gently.”

  Was that Moon repeating himself, or the mountain-ship agreeing with him?

  “Three missiles,” said Anne. “Three passengers in the capsule. How did it know?”

  “Wait,” Daisuke said. “I’m thinking about air.”

  “Good for you,” said Moon.

  “Inside the capsule-pod, why did the portal open? There was no air inside the pod when you opened it.”

  “What are you talking about? I…” Moon’s breathing came faster. “I don’t know. I didn’t even think of that. There was no air in the pod. Of course. How did I make that hurricane? Why did the portal open? It shouldn’t have opened. But I knew it would. And just now…why?”

  “Professor Moon, how can we use the portal?” Daisuke asked.

  “We can’t.” Moon’s voice was as hard and heavy as the mountain bearing down on them. “You’re right. It shouldn’t have worked at all. The experiment should have been an utter waste. I came up here for nothing!”

  “Are you all right? Don’t give up.”

  That was Daisuke’s voice again in her ears, but somehow, Anne didn’t think that it was Daisuke speaking them.

  “Are you all right?” Now it was Anne’s voice. “Come back to me?” Daisuke’s again. “Breathe. Stay calm. Come back to me. Come in. Air. Air. Air. Air. Air.”

  Anne watched the mountain spin. “What are you telling us?”

  It answered in Daisuke’s voice: “The portal. The portal open. Open.”

  The missile streaked under her. Anne got a glimpse of a tangled mat of metal-colored tendrils, a puff of mist, a long silver-gray trunk, and a skirt of fire. Then it was past, receding toward the open peak of the mountain-ship. The rocket-animal – rocket-tree? – had missed her.

  “It’s better for two people to die than three, right?” came Daisuke’s voice.

  ***

  Daisuke cursed, but the ship didn’t repeat him.

  “Dice, that was the ship talking, wasn’t it?” Anne said over the radio.

  “Yes,” he said. “But I still agree with it.” What else could he do? If he could reach out and shove Anne back through the wormhole, he would.

  “I don’t think it understands what it’s saying,” Anne said. “Maybe it doesn’t know what die means.” But she was grasping at straws.

  “Anne, I think it’s time for you to find a way home.” That was Farhad. His voice was heavy. “You’ll get more than your research station. You’ll get everything it is in my power to give. Daisuke, she will be the empress of Junction. Moon, every child will learn your name in school.”

  Daisuke knew he had no reason to believe this old villain, but he took comfort where he could get it. “Thank you,” he said.

  He expected Anne to rage against Farhad for trying to manipulate her. Instead, she said, “Wait a sec. That isn’t Moon’s tropism.”

  “What?” said Daisuke.

  But Anne was still talking as she climbed, her voice that soft, musing murmur it got when most of her brain was involved in speculative science. “He doesn’t even want to be the next Einstein. Not really. Not anymore. If he did, he’d give a damn about his reputation. He wouldn’t keep Farhad’s secrets for him, and Farhad would know that. Oh! That’s why Farhad keeps calling Moon ‘son’. He knows that Moon doesn’t want science anymore.”

  “No!” Moon said. “I do! That’s why I’m so angry that—”

  “Moon wants a miracle. He wants to bring his father back.”

  Radio silence. Daisuke stared through his visor and Moon’s into the man’s eyes. Stars, planet, and orbital biome turned around them.

  The physicist should have sneered. He should have waved a dismissive hand and said, ‘Don’t be stupid. That would be impossible.’ Instead, he whispered, “How did you know?”

  “I observed you,” Anne said. “I know what kind of animal you are, Moon. You thought you were using wormholes to discover the new physics. But even if you were rushing to make your mark before the Alzheimer’s gets you, that wouldn’t explain how fast you’re going. The corners you cut. You’re frantic. In that way, you are like Farhad. You’re not frightened for just yourself. You think you can save your father.”

  “Air,” said the mountain-ship.

  “I thought your father was dead,” said Daisuke.

  “As if that matters!” Moon snorted. “How can you still not see! We’ve been through the portals! You know they violate causality!”

  “You mean,” Daisuke suggested, “that they send us to places beyond our light cone?”

  “You’re just parroting words you don’t understand! I might as well talk to the mountain.”

  “Moon, don’t be a dipshit.”

  “Sorry,” Moon said, and Anne wondered whether she could have saved everyone a lot of trouble if she’d had this exchange with him at the start of the expedition.

  “Open,” said the mountain. “Open. Come in.”

  Moon met Daisuke’s eyes through their visors. “You idiots! You’re so blinded by faster than light travel you can’t see the applications: perpetual motion! Time travel!”

  “I think I get the first one,” Anne said. “You put one wormhole on top of the other and you’ll fall through them forever.”

  “Baby stuff! Look!” Moon thrashed as if trying to escape his suit and explode. “You time-dilate Portal A. Accelerate it. Portal B continues to age normally, but Portal A stays young. For you and Portal B, a day or a year have passed, but for Portal A, it’s still yesterday, it’s still last year. Now if you go through Portal B, you have traveled into the past.”

  “Okay?” said Anne.

  “What ‘okay’? Don’t you see what that means? You care about the environment so much. What if we could go back in time and make sure the environment is never damaged? We could un-do anything!”

  “Well, if we had a handy pair of wormholes,” Anne said. “One of which had already been conveniently accelerated by someone. Who? Friendly god-aliens who knew what we needed before we did?”

  A light was growing on Daisuke’s side.

  “Yes,” Moon said. He let go of the pipe that contained his stolen wormhole.

  “Come in –ack to me,” said the mountain-ship. “Two passengers.”

  “No,” Moon said. “One passenger.”

  “One passenger,” echoed the mountain-ship.

  “Wait, what are you— Oof!”

  Daisuke was still several logical steps behind the conversation, trying to figure out how time travel worked. Moon’s shove took him entirely by surprise.

  The force moved down Daisuke’s arms and shoulders, rocking him backward. Moon drifted in the opposite direction, torso rotating away as his legs pointed toward Daisuke’s chest. Moon’s knees bent.

  “Wait!” This time, Daisuke could see exactly what Moon was trying to do. But how could Daisuke stop him? Grab the man’s ankles and throw off his launch? Doom both of them rather than save both? What was it Farhad had said about win-win scenarios?

  Daisuke kept his arms spread, but he said, “Moon. Are you certain you want to do this?”

  The physicist didn’t answer with words. No doubt he thought that speaking would be a was
te of time.

  Moon just kicked Daisuke hard in the chest, and sent himself flying into space.

  He spun as he flew, like an arrow aimed at the mountain-ship. Silent, except for the breathing on the suit radio. Daisuke tried to find the right words to tell him.

  “It’s all right, Moon,” he said. “You’re on the right course now.”

  “And brace for impact,” came Anne’s voice.

  Moon’s body, tiny now with distance, curled into a ball.

  Then a flash. Fire. A long, smooth body. Tangled, dully gleaming branches like a huge bush made of lead. Moon vanished into that tangle and was gone. The bright spot of the missile’s exhaust receded.

  “It got me,” Moon panted. “It got me!”

  Daisuke turned his head in his helmet, following the rocket-tree as it streaked toward its home mountain. The mountain was close now, and the rocket soon had to flip and fire in the opposite direction, slowing itself as it made ready to dock and deliver its cargo.

  “Come in,” said the voice on their radio. “Come in.”

  “Thank you,” Moon said. “I—”

  Daisuke lost whatever the physicist had to say in the roar of interference as the last rocket-tree blasted past.

  A near miss. Moon’s kick had sent Daisuke flying, and he wasn’t even singed by the exhaust. The missile-shaped organism flew straight past him, returning home with its siblings.

  “You were right? All those crazy guesses and speculations and you managed to get it right?” Moon sounded angry now. “How can you do that?”

  Anne wasn’t listening.

  ***

  Daisuke wasn’t going to make it. Anne could see it. Moon’s kick had been almost perfect, but Daisuke would miss the tether.

  Anne unclipped her carabiner, braced her feet against the cloud of solidified snot the hole-worm had made, and jumped.

  “Stop! What’s going on?” Farhad cried.

  “Anne. No.” Daisuke didn’t scream the words. His voice just broke under their weight.

  “Not now,” she said. “I have an idea. Is your thumb still on the top of that tube?”