Futures - Four Novellas Part 15

Reth, on his hands and knees, turned his masked face to Hama, "You can come with me, Hama Druz. To a better place, a higher place."

"You go alone, pharaoh."

Reth forced a laugh. Then he cried out, his back arching.

He fell forward, and was still.

Nomi raked the body with laser fire. "Good riddance," she growled. "Now can we get out of here?"

There was a mountain.

It rose high above the night-dark sea, proudly challenging the featureless, glowing sky. Rivers flowed from that single great peak, she saw: black and ma.s.sive, striping its huge conical flanks, merging into great tumbling cascades that poured into the ocean.

The mountain was the center of the world, thrusting from the sea.

She was high above an island, a small sc.r.a.p of land that defied the dissolving drenching of the featureless sea. Islands were few, small, scattered, threatened everywhere by the black, crowding ocean.

But, not far away, there was another island, she saw, pushing above the sea of mist. It was a heaping of dust on which trees grew thickly, their branches tangled. In fact the branches reached across the neck of sea that separated this island from her own. She thought she could see a way to reach that island, scrambling from tree to tree, following a great highway of branches.

The other island rose higher than her own above the encroaching sea. There, she thought, she-and whoever followed her-would be safe from lapping dissolution.

For now, anyhow.

But what did that mean? What would Pharaoh have said of this-that the new island was an unlikely heap of reality dust, further from looming entropic destruction?

She shook her head. The deeper meaning of her journey scarcely mattered-and nor did its connection to any other place. If this world were a symbol, so be it: this was where she lived, and this was where she would, with determination and perseverance, survive.

She looked one last time at the towering mountain. Damaged arm or not, she itched to climb it, to challenge its ne- gentropic heights. But in the future, perhaps. Not now.

Carefully, clinging to her branch with arms and legs and her one good hand, she made her way along the branch to the low-probability island. One by one, the people of the beach followed her.

In the mist, far below, she glimpsed slow, ponderous movement: huge beasts, perhaps giant depraved cousins of Night. But, though they bellowed up at her, they could not reach her.

Once more Kama and Nomi stood on the silver-black surface of Callisto, under a sky littered with stars, just as before, the low, slumped ridges of Valhalla still marched to the silent horizon.

But this was no longer a world of antiquity and stillness. The shudders were coming every few minutes now. In places the ice crust was collapsing, ancient features subsiding, here and there sending up sprays of dust and ice splinters that sparkled briefly before falling back, all in utter silence.

Kama thought back to a time before this a.s.signment, to the convocations he had joined. He had been a foolish boy, he thought, his ideas half-formed. Now, when he looked into his heart, he saw crystal-hard determination.

"No more pharaohs," Hama murmured. "No more immortality. That way lies arrogance and compromise and introversion and surrender. A brief life burns brightly."

Nomi growled, "More theory, Hama? Let's count the ways we might die. The Xeelee starbreaker might cream us. One of these miniature quakes might erupt right under us. Or maybe we'll last long enough to suffocate in our own farts, stuck inside these d.a.m.n suits. What do you think? I don't know why you let that arrogant pharaoh kill himself." Hama murmured, "You see death as an escape?" "If it's easy, if it's

under your control-yes." "Reth did escape," Hama said.

"But I don't think it was into death."

"You believed all that stuff about theoretical worlds?" "Yes," Hama said. "Yes, in the end I think I did believe it."

"Why?"

"Because of them" He gestured at the sky. "The Xeelee. If our second-hand wisdom has any validity at all, we know that the Xeelee react to what they fear.

And almost as soon as Reth constructed his interface to his world of logic and data, as soon as the pharaohs began to pa.s.s into it, they came here."

"You think the Xeelee fear us?"

"Not us. The bugs in the ice: Reth's cryptoendoliths, dreaming their billion-year dreams ... The Xeelee seem intent on keeping those dreams from escaping.

And that's why I think Reth hit on a truth, you see. Because the Xeelee see it too."

Now, over one horizon, there was a glowing crimson cloud, like dawn approaching-but there could be no dawn on this all-but-airless world.

"Starbreaker light," murmured Nomi. "The glow must be vapor, ice splinters, dust, thrown up from the trench they are digging."

Kama felt a fierce anger burn. "Once again aliens have walked into our System, for their own purposes, and we can do nothing to stop them. This mustn't happen again, Nomi. Let this be an end-and a beginning, a new Day Zero. You know, perhaps the ax were right to attempt the Extirpation. If we are to survive in this dangerous universe we must remake ourselves, without sentiment, without nostalgia, without pity. History is irrelevant. Only the future is important."

He longed to be gone from this place, to bring his hard new ideas to the great debates that were shaping the future of mankind.

"You're starting to frighten me, my friend," Nomi said gently. "But not as much as that."

Now the Xeelee nightfighter itself came climbing above the shattered fog of the horizon. It was like an immense, black-winged bird. Kama could see crimson starbreaker light stab down into the pa.s.sive, defenseless ice of Callisto. The shuddering of the ground was constant now, as that ma.s.s of shattered ice and steam rolled relentlessly toward them.

Nomi grabbed onto him; holding each other, they struggled to stay on their feet as ice particles battered their faceplates. A tide of destruction spanned Callisto from horizon to horizon. There was, of course, no escape.

And then the world turned silver, and the stars swam.

Hama cried out, clinging to Nomi, and they fell. They hit the ice hard, despite the low gravity.

Nomi, combat-hardened, was on her feet immediately. An oddly pink light caught her squat outline. But Hama, winded, bewildered, found himself gazing up at the stars.

Different stars? No. Just-moved. The Xeelee ship was gone, vanished.

He struggled to his feet.

The wave of vapor and ice was subsiding, as quickly as it had been created; there was no air here to prevent the parabolic fall of the crystals back to the shattered land, little gravity to prevent the escape of the vapor into Jovian s.p.a.ce. The land's shuddering ceased, though he could feel deep slow echoes of huge convulsions washing through the rigid ground...

But the stars had moved.

He turned, taking in the changed sky. Surely the shrunken sun was a little further up the dome of sky.

And a pink slice of Jupiter now showed above the smoothly curved horizon, where none had shown before on this tide-locked moon.

Nomi touched his arm, and pointed deep into the ice. "Look."

It was like some immense fish, embedded in the ground, its spread-eagled black wings clearly visible through layers of dusty ice. A red glow shone fitfully at its heart; as Hama watched it sputtered, died, and the buried ship grew dark.

Nomi said, "At first I thought the Xeelee must have lit up some exotic super drive and got out of here.

But I was wrong. That thing must be half a kilometer down. How did it get there?"

"I don't think it did," Hama said. He turned away and peered at Jupiter. "7 think Callisto moved, Nomi."

"What?..."

"It didn't have to be far. Just a couple of kilometers. Just enough to swallow up the Xeelee craft."

Nomi was staring at him. "That's insane, Hama, what can move a moon?"

Why, a child could, Hama thought in awe. A child playing on a beach-if every grain on that beach is a slice in time.

I see a line sketched in the dust, a history, smooth and complete. I pick out a grain with Callisto positioned just here. And I replace it with a grain in which Callisto is positioned just a little further over there. As easy, as willful, as that.

No wonder the Xeelee are afraid.

A new shuddering began, deep and powerful.

"Lethe," said Nomi. "What now?"

Hama shouted, "Not the Xeelee this time. Callisto spent four billion years settling into its slow waltz around Jupiter. Now I think it's going to have to learn those lessons over again."

'Tides," Nomi growled.

"It might be enough to melt the surface. Perhaps those cryptoendoliths will be wiped out after all. I wonder if the Xeelee planned it that way all along..."

He saw a slow grin spread across Nomi's face. "We aren't done yet." She pointed.

Kama turned. A new moon was rising over Callisto's tight horizon. It was a moon of flesh and metal, and it bore a sigil, a blue-green tetrahedron, burned into its hide.

"The Spline ship, by Lethe," Nomi said. She punched Kama's arm. "So the story goes on, my friend."

Kama glared down into the ice, at the Xeelee craft buried there. Yes, the story goes on. But we have introduced a virus into the software of the universe.

And I wonder what eyes will be here to see, when that ship is finally freed from this tortured ice.

An orifice opened up in the Spline's immense hide. A flitter squirted out and soared over Callisto's ice, seeking a place to land.

Exhausted, disoriented, Callisto and her followers stumbled down the last length of trunk and collapsed to the ground.

She dug her good hand into the loose grains of reality dust. She felt a surge of pride, of achievement.

This island, an island of a new possibility, was her island now.

Hers, perhaps, but not empty, she realized slowly. There was a newborn here: lost, bewildered, suddenly arrived. She saw his face smoothing over, working with anguish and doubt, as he forgot.

But when his gaze lit on her, he became animated.

He tried to stand, to walk toward her. He stumbled, weak and drained, and fell on his face.

Dredging up the last of her own strength, she went to him. She dug her hand under him and turned him on his back-as, once, Pharaoh had done for her.

He opened his mouth. Spittle looped between his lips, and his voice was a harsh rasp. "Gemo!" he gasped. "I made you! Help me! Love me!"

Something tugged at her: recognition-and resentment.

She held his head to her chest. "This won't hurt," she said. "Close your eyes."

And she held him, until the last of his unwelcome memories had leaked away, and, forgetting who he was, he lay still.

Making History

by Paul McAuley

"The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth?" Herman Melville, Moby-d.i.c.k For the Friday Shut-ins One I believe that I first saw Demi Lacombe at the gala reopening of the theater. She had arrived in Paris, Dione a week before, but I am sure that, had I pa.s.sed her in one of the gardens or arcades of the diplomatic quarter, or glimpsed her at one of the receptions or soirees or c.o.c.ktail parties or conversations, I would have remembered her, for in an age where beauty could be cheaply bought, hers was a rare and natural wonder, and not easily forgotten.

So I am certain that we first met that night, at the touring company production of Don Giovanni. The theater of Paris, Dione, was one of the first buildings in the city's main dome to have been restored after the end of the siege. Although the gala performance which marked its reopening was an overt symbol of the occupation force's power, it was the first time many of the force's executives and officials had ventured outside the diplomatic quarter. It was preceded by speeches made more to the media (represented by a single journalist and a dozen remotes) than to the audience, for it was the kind of event which politicians fondly believe will enhance their status, but which usually wins not so much as a footnote in the pages of history.

The theater was a roofless bowl modelled in miniature on Rome's ruined Colosseum. Tiers of seats and private boxes rose steeply all around the circular stage to the rim, where armored troopers and angular killing machines patrolled, tiny shadows against the artificial night. The colonists, who had fought to the death for freedom from Earth's rule, had kept to the twenty-four hour diurnal cycle of their home planet; the panes of the dome, high above, were polarized against the wan light of Dione's midday, and the suspensor lamps were turned down to mere stars.

On the stage's glowing dish, the cast flitted and swarmed through a web of wires and stays like a flock of gaudy birds, freezing in emblematic tableaux during the great arias. The lackl.u.s.ter production had been foolishly gussied up in modern dress, with the Commendatore a robot, Don Giovanni a dispossessed captain of a Kuiper Belt habitat driven mad by a bioweapon symbiont, his servant Leporello an ambitious neuter who borrowed something of lago's malevolent glee at the ordinary human weaknesses of its extraordinary master. From the vantage of my fifth tier box, I paid as much attention to the audience as I did to the familiar allegory of the priapic Don's d.a.m.nation, and two people in a box on the same level as mine quickly caught my eye. One was someone I had come to know well, Cris DeHon, head of the team that was reconstructing the city's information network; DeHon's companion was as

breathtaking as she was incongruous. After the statue of the Commendatore had sprung to life and consigned the Don to his doom amidst flares of flame and writhing, red-skinned demons, after the ritual of applause and encore, DeHon found me at the post performance party which, in truth, was more important to most of the audience than the opera's ch.o.r.eographed histrionics. "Dr. Lacombe has an interest in history," DeHon told me, after it had made the introductions. Like Leporello, the Don's servant, Cris DeHon was a neuter, one of the few people in the room who could not be affected, except in a purely aesthetic sense, by Dr. Lacombe's beauty. And like Leporello, it was consumed by a feverish delight in fomenting intrigue. Perhaps intrigue was to it as s.e.x to most men and women. It was a brilliant and vicious gossip, and a generous source of unreliable information. "Indeed," I said, helplessly, foolishly smiling at DeHon's companion. I confess that, like most men in the chamber, and not a few women, I could not take my eyes from her. She was so unspeakably lovely, swaying gracefully in the low gravity about the anchor point of her sticky shoes like a Nereid on some sea's floor. When I dared to lift her gloved right hand by the tips of her fingers, and bent over her knuckles, the gorgeous creature actually blushed. She was young, and seemed to have not yet grown into her beauty, for she wore it as carelessly as a child costumed in some fabulously antique robe, and was simultaneously embarra.s.sed and amused by the reactions she provoked. Perhaps even then she had a presentiment mat it would be the cause of her death. She said, so softly I had to lean close to hear her, "I am no more than an amateur of history. But of course I have heard of your work, Professor-Doctor Graves." Her Portuguese had a soft, husky lilt. A subtle perfume, with a deep note of musk, rose from the cleft between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, which were displayed to their advantage by the blood-red folds of her spidersilk blouson. A wide belt of red leather measured the narrowness of her waist; red silk trousers, cuffed at the ankles, gathered in complex pleats around her long, slim legs. Her hair was silver and frost; her eyes beaten copper flecked with green. "Demi is too modest," DeHon said. "Her monograph on the conceptual failures in design of early orbital habitats is something of a cla.s.sic." I noted that the ghost of a double chin appeared when Demi Lacombe dipped her head in quiet acknowledgment of DeHon's compliment, and that her bare arms were plump and rosy. I thought then that if she ever had children the natural way, she would have to take care not to grow fat, and it was a relief to realize that her beauty was only mortal. She said, "Cris is probably the only one, apart from myself and my thesis supervisor, who had read all of it." "I like to keep up with our cultural guests," DeHon said. "I'm really more of an engineer," Demi Lacombe told me. "What they did here, with the city parklands, that was true artistry." I learned that she was an environmental engineer, brought to Dione by the Three Powers Occupation Force to survey Paris's damaged ecosystem and to suggest how it could be reconstructed. When I expressed interest, she deflected it automatically. "I am not here to do anything radical. Simply figure out the best way to make the city habitable again. But for a historian to find himself right at the center of history in the making must be tremendously exciting." "The war is over. This gala performance was deliberately staged to make the point. I'm merely picking over its ruins."

"Is it true that you go out into the city without any guards?"

"I have a guide. I need to talk to people when they are at their ease. Bringing them to the diplomatic quarter has unfortunate implications."

"Arrest," DeHon said, with a delicate, refined shudder. "Interrogation."

I said, "I do carry a weapon, but it's as unnecessary as the guards who patrol the perimeter of the theater.