“Anne? Anne?” That was either Moon or the mountain-ship.
“Anne, you idiot!” No, that was Moon. She could hear his teeth gnashing from here. “The tube won’t work. The wormholes only open if there’s breathable…oh! Wait. Oh. Sorry I called you an idiot.”
“It’s okay.”
“Moon, Houlihan! Make sense!” Farhad ordered.
A sigh from the physicist. “Why do portals work that way? Why didn’t the portal work that way in the capsule-pod? Because we’re not dealing with physical laws. These are safety features, created by somebody. There seem to be overrides.”
Anne watched Daisuke swell in her visor. She was close enough now to see the tears in his eyes.
Farhad’s voice wavered. “Anne, are you certain about this?”
“Oh, do you want certainty?” she asked. “What kind of scientist do you think I am?”
She hit Daisuke. He caught her.
They spun round and round, over and over, and in another direction that Anne thought might be called ‘yaw’. Her stomach heaved, but she focused on the pressure against her left glove and right wrist. Daisuke’s fingers. She looked through the top of her helmet at Daisuke’s face.
Pulling him closer actually sped up one of the round-and-round spins, but Anne didn’t care. The movement brought Daisuke’s face closer. He was spinning the same way she was, which meant that, from her perspective, Daisuke was the only thing standing still.
Him and that bottled wormhole.
Anne looked down at the pipe in his right hand. Frost sparkled around the rim where his thumb stoppered it.
The wormhole wasn’t an astronomical phenomenon. It was a tool. A device made by people. Beings with a conscience, perhaps? Mercy and compassion?
“I’ll hug you,” she said. “You put the pipe between us.”
Daisuke got it. He held the pipe, one hand around it, the other under its base. She checked that they were aimed correctly.
Anne pulled him closer and the universe wheeled.
“Okay, Dice. Take your thumb off the end. And please,” she prayed, “take us home.”
Like a spring bubbling up in the desert, light shone from the pipe. Gravity bloomed between them.
Chapter Twenty-One
Wonder and Wormholes
The universe turned upside down. Then in a circle, and back the other way. Junction and its sun danced merrily around the maypole of Anne and Daisuke’s long axis.
Anne couldn’t do much but hold on. Daisuke didn’t look like he was doing the steering either. Sweat ran up, down, and across his face as he fought to keep his grip on the pipe. The bottled wormhole sputtered and sparked, twitching like a snake as it twisted them around itself. The jet of air it blasted into space was the very least of the magic it was working.
Junction wobbled to a stop before Anne. It hung there blue and white, girdled by life and wormholes. A swarm of black specks swirled briefly across the planet’s shining face. Tiny organisms a meter away, or were they farther and larger? Anne couldn’t say.
Static burst in her ears, resolving into the question, “All right?”
The light from the pipe blinked out. Something bopped Anne on the top of her helmet.
“Oh!” said Daisuke and let go of the pipe. His hands scrabbled above them.
Anne looked up to see the lumpy, yogurt-colored surface of the hole-worm’s ball of mucus. It seemed like so long since she’d stood on that thing.
She resisted the urge to push off of Daisuke. The action might very well fling him back into the void. Instead, she reached up and grasped at the hardened mucus. The tips of her gloves found a crest, the edge of a crater where some orbiting creature had smacked into the bolus. She pinched the crater wall, pulled on it, and – thank Newton! – found herself moving in the direction she wanted to go.
Anne hung there for a moment, breathing. Blue and gold light slid along the pipe as it spun under her feet, apparently exhausted. Anne grabbed it, and slipped it through her belt.
“Did you make it? Are you safe?”
“Is that you, Farhad?” Anne asked. “Or should I say thank you to the mountain-ship?”
“Thank you!” said Daisuke.
“Thank you!” his voice echoed back, then switched to Anne’s: “Mountain-ship?”
Anne turned her head and found the mountain-ship. It had risen farther, so it was partly occluded by the tiny horizon/roof of the mucus ball to which Anne clung. “Thank you,” she said again.
“Yes. And you have my thanks too, whatever you are,” Farhad said. “Anne and Daisuke, you should be able to find the tether now and crawl up it. Tell me when to activate the winch on our side. And….” His voice lost its air of command. “Moon? Are you there, son?”
“I’m here.” And an echo. “I’m here.”
The mountain-ship seemed to be spinning up. Long, dull-shining leaves spread out from it like the ribbons in the hair of a dancing girl.
“The rocket delivered me,” Moon said. “It threw me into some sort of internal chamber where I was caught by several layers of appendages. I am now suspended in some sort of gel. I am falling very slowly through it. I believe that this is an airlock.”
How could they hear him? Was the mountain relaying his signals? Nice of it, if so.
“That’s fine, Moon. That’s fine. Uh, Anne, what’s next for him?”
Anne’s first impulse was to tell the truth, which was that she had no idea. But on the assumption that Moon wanted reassurance, and Farhad absolution, she said, “Well, he might be safe. An airlock means air, right?”
“Safe,” the mountain-ship repeated in her voice. Anne hoped it understood English better now. She hoped Moon would be all right.
Anne pulled herself ‘upward’ until she was clinging like a spider to the surface of the mucus ball.
“Hey,” she said. “Moon. Thank you for saving Daisuke.”
“Thank yourself. You’re the one who manipulated me into kicking off him.”
“Jesus Christ, you’re an asshole. All I did was tell you the truth.”
“Yes. Me too.” Moon’s voice was sad. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth earlier. I’m sorry we could never talk to each other.”
The mountain-ship was almost out of sight now, its wide base only just peeking out from behind the curve of Anne’s ball. The long white plume of its rocket stretched across half the sky.
“Me too,” Anne said. “Say hi to the alien overlords for me?”
“I found the tether,” said Daisuke. “Anne, come to me. Then I think if we crawl to the opposite side of this ball, we will find the wormhole.”
They found more than just one. As they crawled around the curve of the mucus ball, the whole Nightbow came into view. Ranks of wormholes curved off into the distance on all sides, and drifted slowly in layers over their heads. The mountain-ship was making for one of these.
“Moon,” Anne said. “You’re in the interchange. I think you’re about to pass through a wormhole.”
A heavy sigh from him. “Would you stop calling them wormholes, Anne?”
“You still want to have this argument with me?” Anne tried to imagine what must be going through his head. “Fine. We’ll call them whatever you want. We’ll call them Moons, if that will make you happy.”
“That will be very confusing,” said Daisuke.
Moon’s chuckle was nearly drowned by the static. “Do you know what my name means? Moon means gateway, as in the Namdaemun.”
Anne watched the narrow peak of the mountain-ship angle toward a particular green-white bubble.
“Just call them portals,” Moon said. “Call them privileged perspectives in space-time. Or, hm. Just one perspective. Yes, that might work. One portal with ten thousand faces, and we are the bugs that crawl across them.”
The peak of the mo
untain-ship kissed the portal.
“Um,” Anne said, “you can go ahead and ask the Zookeepers whether you’re right?”
He laughed. “No, you’re still thinking the portals are artifacts, but they’re not. There is only one portal, and it is the creator!”
Farhad said, “Godspeed, son.”
The portal expanded and the mountain-ship seemed to twist. The stars of Junction vanished, replaced by other lights. Moving lights.
On the other side of the portal, sparks drifted and darted like insects, parting to reveal, not a planet but a glittering tangle of branches. A forest canopy the size of a continent.
The fish-eye lens of the portal bent those branches into the fingers of cupped palms. They seemed to hold their distant sun. Anne thought of trees, stabilizing soil, fixing carbon, channeling great gobs of water from the ground into the air, which they also made. That was the ultimate free lunch: from valueless regolith, atmosphere, and stellar radiation, life built itself.
The view continued to expand with the mountain-ship. Now Anne could see other mountain-ships drifting over the lead-colored canopy like bees hovering over the crown of an oak. That structure must be the size of the moon at least. And beyond it rose the rim of a planet.
White and green clouds swirled over blue-black depths. Streams of gas and life swirled in immortal hurricanes. The shadows of other moons tracked across the titanic face of a living gas giant.
“What is that?” Daisuke asked.
“The Terminus.” That was Anne’s voice, but she hadn’t opened her mouth.
“Godspeed,” said the mountain-ship, and the portal collapsed behind it. The jet of gas from its rocket dissipated, leaving behind the ranks of orbiting portals. The Nightbow wound on, as stable as ever.
***
The trip back to Junction was very interesting.
The hole-worm cascaded over them, and did not digest their space suits. All it did was swallow them.
Weight returned with gentle pressure, as if they were riding a train. Where did this energy come from? Where did their orbital velocity go? Anne had the impression of vast, secret spaces. An entire alien landscape seen through a pinhole. Moon thought the portals were all one big thing. Anne thought they contained even greater multitudes.
For a while, she just held on to the tether, relishing the feeling of weight. Her boots on the ground.
Daisuke turned on his torch, illuminating a long, upward-sloping tunnel. Wetness glistened on smooth ribbed walls. The tether went right through the middle. “All right,” he said, “let’s climb.”
The climb was much less interesting. After the first ten minutes of slowly pulling themselves through pulsing darkness, Anne wanted to talk.
“Daisuke,” she said, “are you familiar with the phrase ‘manna from heaven’?”
“Something about magic?”
“No, that’s mana with one N. From video games. Manna with two Ns is from the Bible. When the Jews escaped Egypt and they were wandering in the desert, God dropped food on them, like fish in an aquarium.”
Farhad groaned over the radio, but Daisuke said, “All right?”
Anne watched the worm’s gut pulse on the walls. “Well, I was thinking about this system that shuttles materials back and forth between Junction’s orbit and its surface. Food from heaven on earth, food from earth in heaven. Except it isn’t a one-time thing. It doesn’t just drop onto your head miraculously one day, it happens every day. For a hundred million years.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The people who built this place – the Zookeepers, or Moon’s portal-god – knew all about sustainability,” Anne said. “They had at least a hundred million years of foresight. They didn’t just build machines that built machines, they set up the system that caused the machines to evolve! With nothing but dust and starlight and one second after another, they made all of this. Everything we’ve seen.” Anne pulled herself up another step. “I think that’s the only way you can really make anything.”
Silence on the radio, except for the ragged breathing from her and Daisuke and Farhad. The bodies of three people, surviving from second to second.
Finally, they stood in the tunnel mouth. Anne looked out over the dark and hazy Toymaker Mountains, the rolling Cavalier biome and the orange tangle of the Dorado forest, thicker now. Living mist rose in the last gusts from the exhausted hole-worm – curtains layered with subtle shapes. High clouds floated above, dotted with kelp-tree balloons. And below down the slope, there were human faces.
Farhad and Aimi. Turtle and Boss Rudi. Misha was gone, but Anne would find him again. The humans’ mouths opened and closed. Turtle waved his hands in joy. Farhad wiped away tears.
Anne waved back. She could finally unclasp her helmet and breathe some fresh air. The air smelled of rock, strange soil, and the cat piss of whatever enzyme the hole-worm used to break down its dried mucus.
And everyone was shouting.
Farhad put his arms around Anne. She couldn’t feel him squeezing through her suit, but he sure did rock her back and forth.
The others took their turns. Turtle, Aimi, even Boss Rudi. They’d been worried about her, Anne realized. They really cared about her.
They cared so much that it took almost half an hour before Farhad said, “We need to talk about what we’re going to tell people when we get back.”
Anne turned to him. “All right. Say your piece.”
Farhad hung his head, leaning toward her. “Anne, I want to thank you.”
“Uh, yeah?”
“You made me realize something. Something that’s been driving me for a long time.”
“Yeah, no problem,” said Anne. She was still uncomfortable around Farhad and didn’t really want to talk to him. That made her think. Maybe there was something under that discomfort for her to discover. “Uh, I mean, yeah? What did you realize?”
Farhad’s eyes crinkled as if he’d read her thoughts. But then he looked away, expression uncertain. “When I was a teenager, I was smuggled into Turkey in the back of a pickup truck.”
Yeah, I know, you told me, Anne didn’t say. She waited.
“I remember hiding under a tarp, behind a crate of some foul chemical or other, thinking, If I can just make it across the border.” Farhad shook himself. “But of course, once I made it to Turkey, my troubles weren’t over. Nor when I reached England, nor America. When I came to Junction and the Howling Mountain, I thought that we would find something here that would repay my sacrifices. Instead, you found another mountain. A mountain in space.”
Farhad’s voice didn’t falter, but his shoulders jerked. His hands flew to his face, where they hid his eyes as his shoulders jerked again.
Anne had zero idea of what to do. Was Farhad crying? Should she…run away? Pretend nothing was happening? Comfort him? How? She looked around at Daisuke for help, but then she didn’t need it. She remembered the living mist, and how they’d reached through it for each other.
“You’re crying,” Anne said. “You must be sad because…because there’s always another mountain.”
Farhad jerked again and said, “Ha!”, which was ambiguous as hell. Should she laugh with him? Give him a hug? Anne couldn’t bring herself to do that. But she could stand here and make sure this old man knew he wasn’t alone.
“You can never really arrive anywhere, can you?” Anne groped for understanding. “You can never say, all right, I got to the finish line. I’m done. You just have to keep climbing and climbing forever. What with Junction and the Howling Mountain, and the Interchange and the Terminus beyond that….”
Anne wasn’t looking at Farhad anymore, but over his head. Her voice had gotten faster and louder. She bounced on her toes.
“Ha!” said Farhad again, and sniffed. “Professor Houlihan, you’re excited.”
“Damn right I’m excited. There
’s so much to learn!”
“There is, indeed. The amount of things we have to learn never ends.” Farhad straightened. “And that’s a good thing. Thank you for reminding me of that.”
Anne felt the urge to end the conversation there. But that was an urge that Farhad was projecting, wasn’t it? She resisted. And made a mental note to learn that trick herself.
“That’s all well and good,” she said. “Deep psychological insights and all. Good on you. But now what? We go back to civilization and tell them we’ve discovered the Zookeepers? Oh, and by the way, we can move around and destroy wormholes.”
“Maybe because people know about the Zookeepers, they will be afraid to interfere with the wormholes,” said Daisuke.
Anne and Farhad both snorted.
“Come on, Dice,” she said. “The looming threat of alien retribution will make people want to steal and destroy wormholes faster.”
Farhad’s eyes flicked up to the sky. “If it isn’t already too late.”
“So, we keep everything a secret,” Daisuke said, but Farhad was already shaking his head.
“No. We’ll tell the world what it needs to know. Portals are tools, and their makers are still here, actively using them. Our next play in this game should be to—” he glanced at Anne and caught himself, “— but I won’t tell you how to spin the news. In fact, what you said just now, both of you, that conversation, was perfect. Just repeat that.”
He smiled, which made Anne even more suspicious. “Wait a moment. Is that why you brought me here? I’m the one who sent the news about the wormhole to the whole world. Daisuke’s the face of happy shiny international co-operation on Junction. And you want us to break your story.”
Farhad shrugged. “It’s your story too, isn’t it?”
Daisuke chuckled as if at a clever chess move, but Anne just shook off the appeal to her ego. Farhad ought to know by now that that wouldn’t work.
“No,” she said, and pointed at the ground. “It’s Junction’s story.”
Daisuke and Farhad both nodded, but she could tell that Farhad was faking it. He still had no idea what she was talking about.
Interchange Page 31