Xeelee Redemption

by Baxter, Stephen

  She glanced around at Poole, Max. ‘Some others asked me to speak today, because you oldsters might listen to me. What with me being like a symbol. I was the firstborn of the second generation of the flotilla. Why, my parents named me after you, Michael. And, with all respect, Chinelo, you do what you like. I admire you. You’re always out there in front. But you don’t speak for all of us.’

  Chinelo stayed seated, but frowned.

  Max Ward was watching all this warily, as if they were close to a mutiny.

  Jophiel saw Nicola grinning.

  Poole was gracious enough. ‘Fair enough. If you speak for the others—’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘We’re not that organised. We just want to ask questions. You said you wanted to finish the job you started. Which is to find the Xeelee, and . . . well, then what? I mean, so much has changed. What is the Xeelee doing here, on this Wheel?’

  Poole was evidently reining in his impatience. ‘You heard the briefings. You know what it’s doing. As best we can guess. Look – we know the Wheel is basically a time machine. One-way. The Xeelee was wounded during the battle for the Solar System. So it came here, to the Galaxy Core black hole, and is hiding out. Perhaps even healing, until—’

  ‘But that can’t be all of it,’ Michaela said. ‘Why build the Wheel? I mean, the decks, the cupworlds. Why build all these refuges, for all these alien races? See, I think – many of us think – that this Wheel is exactly what it looks like. It’s not some kind of fortress. It’s an ark. It’s a haven for our kind of life – life like ours, like the Xeelee, life made of light matter, as opposed to the spooky dark-matter stuff that the Xeelee are fighting in their big war. The Wheel has already lasted a long time, as a haven. Why, the runners and tree-climbers on this cupworld have been here so long they’ve had time to evolve. And not only that, when this cupworld was damaged, the Xeelee came out here to fix it. You proved that yourself, Michael.

  ‘The Xeelee . . . cares for its creation. And, presumably, the creatures that live on it. Maybe the Xeelee means to save us all, somehow. Not just itself.’

  Poole studied her, as if baffled. ‘Make your point, Michaela. What are you saying?’

  She seemed to take some time to summon up the courage to reply – but then, Jophiel was slowly realising, she was challenging the orthodoxy that had governed this mission since before she had been born. Which, he supposed, was just what a new generation was supposed to do.

  He found himself silently urging her on. Speak well, Michaela.

  ‘I’m saying that we do understand what you mean when you say you’ll finish the job. You don’t want to just find the Xeelee. You don’t want to understand it. You want to hunt it down, and destroy it.’

  Poole frowned. ‘We crossed the Galaxy to do just that. After it came to the Solar System, and tried to eliminate humanity altogether—’

  Michaela said in a rush, ‘But it came from a timeline where humans inflicted a huge extinction event on the whole Galaxy. From its point of view it isn’t just destroying stuff for the sake of it. It’s putting something right.’

  ‘I came here to destroy it. That was the purpose of the expedition.’

  ‘Yes. Because of what happened before any of us were born. We never knew Earth. We never even knew Cold Earth . . .’

  Michael Poole paced, looking furious, frustrated.

  Jophiel found himself intrigued, disturbed.

  Of course she was right. An oath of vengeance taken by a forty-four-year-old Poole back on the frozen ruin of the home world had seemed noble, even inevitable at the time. And it had propelled this quixotic mission across the face of the Galaxy. But nobody back then had ever imagined this. Nobody had planned for how the next generation might feel about it. They must have managed things better in that other, lost timeline, he thought now. Where, according to the Poole family archive, a twenty-thousand-year war had been fought and won with child soldiers. Endless generations shaped under a ghastly Galaxy-wide authority, apparently called the Coalition of Interim Governance. We look like amateurs compared to that lot, he reflected. Yet here we are.

  He asked now, gently, ‘What would you have us do, Michaela?’

  ‘We did come here for a purpose. To defeat the Xeelee. But that doesn’t look so simple now. Across this vast distance, through so much time . . . We should deal with what we’ve actually found.’

  ‘And so—’

  ‘The Xeelee. Spare it. Let it finish the job it started here. Let it save itself, and whatever else it has collected here. Because killing it won’t bring back Earth.’

  Susan nodded earnestly. ‘And then – what for you, child?’

  ‘We’ve thought about that,’ Michaela said quickly. ‘It’s not that we’ve been conspiring . . .’

  Max Ward glared.

  ‘We want to stay here. Here, in High Africa. Look, it’s another Earth. It’s been stable a long time, and evidently even survived the star impacts on the Wheel. We can live here, safely. That was the point, wasn’t it? We thought this cupworld, High Africa, would be a refuge for the long term.’

  Max growled, ‘And a base from which to strike at the Xeelee.’

  Michaela insisted, ‘But we don’t have to follow that through. Instead—’

  Max Ward sneered. ‘Instead, what? Climb trees, and run away from giant rats? And wait for your mind to dissolve?’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be that way,’ Michaela said defiantly. ‘And it’s not as if there’s anywhere else to go. This is all there is. This world is the only home we will ever have, except for the inside of a truck.

  ‘And now it’s our turn to choose.

  ‘We don’t want to go through that wormhole, Michael. Whatever lies beyond. Some of us, anyhow. We can’t stop you going through and facing the Xeelee. But we don’t want to wage war. We want to live, and we want to live here.’ She grinned. ‘We have a whole world. Who knows what we’ll achieve?’

  She seemed to stumble to a halt, looked around uncertainly, and sat down.

  Jophiel had to smile. ‘It’s just like when the Island broke away. Here we go again.’

  And Nicola started to clap, a heavy, unreal sound with human hands encased in glove-like Ghost hide. ‘Well said, Michaela. We may be a bunch of brutalised relics, but somehow we managed to raise a bunch of smart kids.’

  For a few more seconds she clapped alone. Then Susan Chen joined in. And Harris Kemp. And Chinelo, Michaela’s tentative rival for the leadership of the new generation.

  Then Jophiel.

  Though that earned him an angry glare from Max Ward. And a baffled glance from Poole, who stood unsmiling.

  When the applause died down, Poole stepped forward. ‘I hear you, Michaela.’ He looked around. ‘I hear you all. But I’m – look, I’m not a soldier. This isn’t a troop ship. Or a prison. I can’t, won’t, force anyone who chooses not to follow.’

  ‘But,’ Asher said, standing up, ‘if we’re talking about splitting again, before we go on with this, there’s something I need to make crystal clear, to all of you – all of us. Suppose you do stay, while Michael and others go on. The choice to separate, once made, can’t be unmade. Because of the time dilation. If Michael goes down into the time pit, down to Deck One . . . in an hour, for Michael, a century will pass up here. And if he comes back after a day, this moment, which we experience now, will be more than two millennia gone. If your descendants survive at all, he will be history at best, or legend – or forgotten, at worst. And after a week, a month . . . Look, if we split now, it’s for good. Well. That’s all I have to say.’ She sat down.

  Poole stepped forward. ‘Fine. Are we done? Given all that’s been said – and we’re going to have to consult the whole crew properly, I know – how many of you want to stay?’

  It really was just like the Island split all over again. Max glowered, the vote was a hesitant one, and Jophiel wondered
if some of the rebels feared some kind of reprisal.

  But the result was clear enough.

  Chinelo came to stand by Poole’s side.

  But about half the crew, including most of Michaela’s generation, did not want to follow Michael Poole any further.

  68

  Ship elapsed time since launch: 27 years 187 days

  Earth date: c. ad 2,710,000

  It was another complicated and painful separation. Sharing out the trucks and other equipment was the easy part. Splitting the people was trickier.

  Most of the seniors opted to stay with Poole. Jophiel himself. Max Ward, Nicola, Asher, Harris, Chinelo. Susan Chen too. ‘To the end, Michael Poole! To the end!’

  But as far as the crew was concerned, that preliminary vote proved not to be quite definitive. Some crew changed sides through fear, or perhaps hope, Jophiel thought, regarding the strange alternative destinies on offer: a life either on a damaged artificial world or in the bowels of a Xeelee artefact.

  Then there was some rejigging of the lists when Harris, with the backup of Poole and others, gave stern warnings about the need to maximise genetic diversity within each of the two halves of the crew. Twenty-five or so was a low number for a colony’s founding population, but not impossibly so – not if the founders were genetically diverse enough to begin with. But Harris, having the data to hand, was able to show that the split as initially proposed was far from optimal, genetically speaking. He insisted on a few tweaks. Poole asked for volunteers to switch sides, and was deeply relieved, Jophiel thought, to get them, and not to have to transfer crew by order, or even compulsion.

  It did mean that a few sets of siblings were broken up. Bob Thomas would go through with Chinelo, but there were cases of children leaving their parents.

  Even after that, Jophiel found himself hesitantly approaching Poole with more issues.

  ‘We have some oddities,’ Jophiel said.

  ‘Oddities?’

  ‘Wina from High Australia wants to go through.’

  ‘Let her.’

  ‘Our captured Ghost?’

  ‘Bring it.’ Poole grinned, wolfish. ‘Might be entertaining to bring the two great enemies of mankind together. What else?’

  Jophiel hesitated. He had a vision of that other Poole. The one who should have existed. And the one urgent request he had made of Jophiel.

  ‘The dark-matter pod. With the photino fish inside.’

  Poole frowned. ‘That we retrieved at Goober’s Star.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So,’ Jophiel said, his voice an urgent whisper, ‘we need to make sure we take it with us. Down to Deck One.’

  Poole rubbed his nose. ‘Why? Those fish are in a lifeboat of their own already. They’ll be safe here, on Deck Three. Why should we clutter up our trucks with that?’

  Jophiel wrestled with a decision. ‘I can’t tell you that. Not yet. It’s complicated. Look, I’ll see to it myself. But I’m a Virtual, I’m only ever one system crash away from extinction. I want to be sure this happens. And I want you to promise me you’ll do it.’

  Poole rarely looked his Virtual copy in the face; he did so now. ‘Why do you care so much?’

  Jophiel sighed. ‘Suppose I said, because you told me so.’

  Poole thought that over, and grinned. ‘We’re Pooles. For us that doesn’t even register as odd. Sure, I’ll make sure it is saved. OK? Now leave me alone, you fruitcake, and get back to work.’

  Because of the time dilation, the final passage through the wormhole was complicated, and extended.

  They soon worked out that you couldn’t shove people and materiel down at random through the wormhole. A second down there mapped to eleven days on Deck Three. Just shove stuff through and there would soon be a disorderly heap. So the transition was planned, rehearsed, and the crew took their time. The party’s trucks and other equipment were disassembled and passed through, component by component, with bots on either side of the wormhole, and people followed too, each in their skinsuit, lugging personal gear, two or three at a time.

  It took a whole year by Deck Three time. A year more, after a quarter-century mission.

  But on Deck One, the whole pile came through in seconds, and the bots worked frantically to retrieve the gear and hustle the people out of the way.

  And when it was done, Poole and Jophiel were the last to enter the Xeelee wormhole. And pass through—

  To the other side.

  In the gloom of what felt like a basement, for a moment the two of them stood side by side, in an anonymous blue box. Jophiel thought he could feel the heaviness of time down here, gummed up as it was with the glue of relativity. And they were surrounded by a slowly dispersing crowd of people and their gear, that year of flow compressed into a minute. Jophiel glimpsed the Ghost, caged and heavily guarded.

  ‘Take a deep breath,’ he said now. ‘Another. Say five seconds a breath. Down here, five seconds maps onto sixty days up there. Take five more breaths – a year. Michaela and her crew are already forgetting us. Ten or twelve breaths, two years gone already—’

  ‘Enough,’ Poole growled. ‘We have work to do. And, listen, now we’re down here I figure we have just a hundred and sixty-seven ship days left before the Xeelee hits its Great Attractor completion milestone. Five million years. Whatever we do, it has to be before then. Let’s get started.’ And he stomped out of the chamber.

  Jophiel stayed for a while, just counting his breaths. Remembering faces he would never see again, no matter what the future held.

  Then he followed his template.

  69

  Back on Deck One.

  It all felt familiar to Jophiel: the bare hull-plate surface, the relativistic sky, red and blue. A sky where rays of light followed curved lines, he realised. The people standing around, with their stuff. It almost seemed mundane.

  Once the wormhole hatch was closed, Max Ward immediately took charge.

  He called together most of the crew into one of the trucks. Only a few were left outside on what he called guard duty. They crowded in.

  And Max faced down Michael Poole.

  ‘Look,’ Max said bluntly. ‘We’re now back in enemy territory, and we’re going to get a lot closer to the foe. Right? Because we’re here to take on the Xeelee. This situation is why you brought me here, Michael. Precisely why. If you aren’t going to listen to me now, then when?’

  Jophiel watched uncertainly as Poole faced him, neither aggressively nor passively, Jophiel thought.

  Jophiel was uneasy about Max’s general demeanour. Tense. Impatient. Nicola caught Jophiel’s eye. Her silvered face was all but expressionless, but he could see what she was thinking – how she was harbouring the same doubts. Maybe the man had just been through too much strangeness, too much change – the latest being this strange time-shift isolation from so many of the crew he had been training for years.

  If Poole felt the same, he didn’t show it. ‘Your priorities, Max? I guess to get a habitat of some kind established . . .’

  Max shook his head. ‘There you go. That’s not the priority at all. Our priority now, our only priority, is engagement with the Xeelee. And everything we do has to be shaped by that. And why? Because we’re so close, and we have so little time. Just a hundred and sixty-seven days, remember, before that weird five-million-year deadline. So how far away is the Xeelee?’

  Asher said, ‘We think around a million kilometres.’ A rueful smile. ‘In most circumstances that would seem a long way. Now we’ve got here we can confirm that, anyhow. That’s based on observation of gravity-wave anomalies. A known signature of Xeelee tech.’

  Chinelo, default leader of the younger crew, frowned at that. ‘And does the Xeelee know we’re here?’

  Max pointed at her. ‘Good question. We have to assume it does, unless proven otherwise
. I mean, here we are crawling around the artefact like we escaped from a cupworld – monkeys out of a cage. It must know, it must sense us and our crawling caravans.’

  Somehow Jophiel hadn’t thought that through. Why was it the Xeelee hadn’t dealt with the rogue humans long before? It must have sensed the crash of the Cauchy in the first place. Was it watching them even now? Was it waiting for them to fall into some kind of trap? Or . . .

  Keep going, Jophiel. Finish the thought. That odd, gravelly voice in his unreal ear.

  Or, he thought, the Xeelee meant them no harm.

  Heretical. I’d keep that to myself if I were you . . .

  ‘So,’ Max said. ‘A million klicks. How do we get there?’

  ‘A million kilometres.’ Poole gazed into a softscreen. ‘We have the trucks, and the flyer. We need the trucks to live in. The flyer’s a lot faster. But it has a small capacity, and is really meant for high-altitude flight. And that’s a risk; the Cauchy was downed by the Wheel’s impact defences, remember? Also we already know that the hull-plate river solution won’t work; it’s not flowing in this part of the Wheel – maybe because of the stellar-impact damage.’

  ‘Then we need speed close to the ground,’ Max said.

  Poole nodded. ‘So we rig something up with the flyer. A low-level capability, maybe based on some kind of ground effect – downward thrusters to keep us above the hull-plate floor, effectively frictionless. Essentially we adapt the flyer as a hovercraft. You could reach some pretty high speeds that way, even at low level.’

  ‘How fast?’

  Poole shrugged. ‘A thousand kilometres an hour? So it would take forty, fifty days of flight to get to the Xeelee.’

  Max rubbed his chin. ‘That will have to do. But we only have a hundred and sixty-seven days. Realistically, at that rate, we won’t have time for more than one return mission. Right? We need to get it right first time.’