Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring (35 page)

The Governor said, ‘You are implying that we may be witnessing here a functioning time machine? - a passage, a tunnel through time which connects us to the humanity of fifteen centuries ago?’

‘Yes. Perhaps we are.’ Parz stared at the image, trying to make out detail in the faces of the tetrahedron. Was it possible that just beyond those sheets of flawed space was a Solar System free of the domination of the Qax - a system peopled by free, bold, immortal humans, brave enough to conceive such an audacious project as the Interface? He willed himself to see through these grainy pixels into a better past. But there was insufficient data in this long-range image, and soon his old eyes felt rheumy and sore, despite their enhancements.

The Qax had fallen silent.

With the image still frozen on the screen, Parz settled back into his chair and closed his aching eyes. He was growing tired of the Governor’s game. Let it get to the point in its own time.

It was depressing to reflect on how little more had been learned about the Qax during the Occupation: even human ambassadors like Parz were kept at more than arm’s length. Still, Parz had used his fleeting contacts to sift out fragments of knowledge, wisdom, glimpses of the nature of the Qax, all built into the picture that had been handed down from a happier past.

Like everybody else, Parz had never actually seen a Qax. He suspected that they were physically extensive - otherwise, why use Spline freighters to travel? - but, in any event, it was not their physical form but their minds, their motivation, that was so fascinating. He’d become convinced that it was only by knowing the enemy - by seeing the universe through the consciousness of the Qax - that men could hope to throw off the heavy yoke of the Occupation.

He had come to suspect, for instance, that comparatively few individuals comprised the Qax race - perhaps no more than thousands. Certainly nothing like the billions which had once constituted humanity, in the years before the development of AS technology. And he was sure that there were only three or four Qax individuals assigned to the supervision of Earth, orbiting in the warm bellies of their Spline freighters.

This hypothesis had many corollaries, of course.

The Qax were immortal, probably - certainly there was evidence that the same Governor had ruled Earth from the beginning of the Occupation. And with such a small and static population, and with all the time in the world, each Qax would surely come to know the rest of its species intimately.

Perhaps too well.

Parz imagined rivalries building over centuries. There would be scheming, manoeuvring, endless politicking . . . and trading. With such a small and intimate population surely, no form of formal policing could operate. How to build consensus behind any laws? How to construct laws which would not be seen to discriminate against individuals?

. . . But there were natural laws which governed any society. Parz, drifting into a contemplative doze, nodded to himself. It was logical. The Qax must work like so many independent corporations, in pure competition; they would swim in a sea of perfect information about each other’s activities and intentions, kept in some semblance of order only by the operation of the laws of economics. Yes; the theory felt right to Parz. The Qax were natural traders. They had to be. And trading relationships would be their natural mode of approaching other species, once they started spreading beyond their own planet.

Unless, as in the case of humanity, other opportunities, too soft and welcoming, beckoned . . .

Parz didn’t believe - as many commentators maintained - that the Qax were an innately militaristic species. With such a small number of individuals they could never have evolved a philosophy of warfare; never could they have viewed soldiers (of their own race) as expendable cannon-fodder, as a renewable resource to be husbanded or expended to suit the needs of a conflict. The murder of a Qax must be a crime of unimaginable horror.

No, the Qax weren’t warlike. They had defeated humanity and occupied the Earth merely because it had been so easy.

Of course, this wasn’t a popular view, and Parz had learned to keep it to himself.

‘Ambassador Jasoft Parz.’

The Governor’s sharp, feminine voice jarred him to full alertness. Had he actually slept? He rubbed his eyes and sat up - then winced at fresh aches in his spine. ‘Yes, Governor. I can hear you.’

‘I have brought you here to discuss new developments.’

Parz screwed up his eyes and focused on the slate before him. At last, he thought. He saw the approaching Interface tetrahedron, in an image as devoid of detail as before; the pixels seemed as large as thumbprints. The star background twinkled slowly. ‘Is this a recording? Why are you showing me this? This is worse than the data I brought you.’

‘Watch.’

Parz, with a sigh, settled back as comfortably as he could; the sentient chair rubbed sympathetically at his back and legs.

Some minutes passed; on the screen the tetrahedron hung on the rim of interstellar space, unchanging.

Then there was an irruption from the righthand side of the screen, a sudden blur, a bolt of pixels which lanced into the heart of the tetrahedron and disappeared.

Parz, forgetting his back, sat up and had the slate replay the image, moment by moment. It was impossible to make out details of any kind, but the meaning of the sequence was clear. ‘My God,’ he breathed. ‘That’s a ship, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said the Governor. ‘A human ship.’

The Qax produced more reports, shards of detail.

The ship, camouflaged somehow, had exploded from the surface of the Earth. It had reached hyperspace within seconds, before the orbiting Spline fleet could react.

‘And it made it through the tetrahedron?’

‘Apparently a group of humans have escaped into the past. Yes.’

Parz closed his eyes as exultation surged through him, rendering him young again. So this was why he had been called to orbit.

The Qax said, ‘Ambassador. Why did you not warn me of the approach of the Interface device? You say that its mission profile was documented and understood, that it was due to return.’

Parz shrugged. ‘What do you want me to tell you? A mission profile like that, based on the technology of the time, has uncertainty margins measured in centuries. It’s been fifteen hundred years, Governor!’

‘Still,’ said the Governor evenly, ‘you would regard it as your duty to warn me of such events?’

Parz bowed his head ironically. ‘Of course.
Mea culpa
.’ It probably made the Qax feel better to rail at him, he reflected. Well, to absorb blame on behalf of humanity was part of his job.

‘And what of the human evacuees? The ship which escaped? Who built it? How did they conceal their intentions? Where did they obtain their resources?’

Parz smiled, feeling his papery old cheeks crumple up. The tone of the translator box continued as sweetly, as sexily even as ever; but he imagined the Qax boiling with unexpressed rage within its womblike Spline container. ‘Governor, I haven’t the first idea. I’ve failed you, obviously. And do you know what? I don’t give a damn.’ Nor, he realized with relief, did he care about his own personal fate. Not any more.

He had heard that those close to death experienced a calm, an acceptance that was close to the divine - a state that had been taken from humanity by AS technology. Could that describe his mood now, this strange, exultant calmness?

‘Ambassador,’ the Qax snapped. ‘Speculate.’

‘You speculate,’ Parz said. ‘Or are you unable to? Governor, the Qax are traders - aren’t you? - not conquerors. True emperors learn the minds of their subjects. You haven’t the first idea what is going on in human hearts . . . and that is why you are so terrified now.’ His eyes raked over the faceless interior of the flitter. ‘Your own, awful ignorance in the face of this startling rebellion. That’s why you’re scared, isn’t it?’

The translator box hissed, but was otherwise silent.

M
ichael Poole’s father, Harry, twinkled into existence in the middle of the
Hermit Crab
’s lifedome. Glimmering pixels cast highlights onto the bare, domed ceiling before coalescing into a stocky, smiling, smooth-faced figure, dressed in a single-piece sky-blue suit. ‘It’s good to see you, son. You’re looking well.’

Michael Poole sucked on a bulb of malt whisky and glowered at his father. The roof was opaque, but the transparent floor revealed a plane of comet ice over which Harry seemed to hover, suspended. ‘Like hell I am,’ Michael growled. His voice, rusty after decades of near-solitude out here in the Oort Cloud, sounded like gravel compared to his father’s smooth tones. ‘I’m older than you.’

Harry laughed and took a tentative step forward. ‘I’m not going to argue with that. But your age is your choice. You shouldn’t drink so early in the day, though.’

The Virtual’s projection was slightly off, so there was a small, shadowless gap between Harry’s smart shoes and the floor; Michael smiled inwardly, relishing the tiny reminder of the unreality of the scene. ‘The hell with you. I’m two hundred and seven years old. I do what I please.’

A look of sad affection crossed Harry’s brow. ‘You always did, son. I’m joking.’

Michael took an involuntary step back from the Virtual; the adhesive soles of his shoes kept him locked to the floor in the weightless conditions of the lifedome. ‘What do you want here?’

‘I want to give you a hug.’

‘Sure.’ Michael splashed whisky over his fingertips and sprinkled droplets over the Virtual; golden spheres sailed through the image, scattering clouds of cubical pixels. ‘If that was true you’d be speaking to me in person, not through a Virtual reconstruct.’

‘Son, you’re four light-months from home. What do you want, a dialogue spanning the rest of our lives? Anyway these modern Virtuals are so damned good.’ Harry had that old look of defensiveness in his blue eyes now, a look that took Michael all the way back to a troubled boyhood.
Another justification
, he thought. Harry had been a distant father, always bound up with his own projects - an irregular, excuse-laden intrusion into Michael’s life.

The final break had come when, thanks to AS, Michael had grown older than his father.

Harry was saying, ‘Virtuals like this one have passed all the Turing tests anyone can devise for them. As far as you’re concerned, Michael, this is me - Harry - standing here talking to you. And if you took the time and trouble you could send a Virtual back the other way.’

‘What do you want, a refund?’

‘Anyway, I had to send a Virtual. There wasn’t time for anything else.’

These words, delivered in an easy, matter-of-fact tone, jarred in Michael’s mind. ‘Wasn’t time? What are you talking about?’

Harry fixed him with an amused stare. ‘Don’t you know?’ he asked pointedly. ‘Don’t you follow the news?’

‘Don’t play games,’ said Michael wearily. ‘You’ve already invaded my privacy. Just tell me what you want.’

Instead of answering directly, Harry gazed down through the clear floor beneath his feet. The core of a comet, a mile wide and bristling with ancient spires of ice, slid through the darkness; spotlight lasers from the
Hermit Crab
evoked hydrocarbon shades of purple and green. ‘Quite a view,’ Harry said. ‘It’s like a sightless fish, isn’t it? - a strange, unseen creature, sailing through the Solar System’s darkest oceans.’

In all the years he’d studied the comet, that image had never struck Michael; hearing the words now he saw how right it was. But he replied heavily, ‘It’s just a comet. And this is the Oort Cloud. The cometary halo, a third of a light-year from the Sun; where all the comets come to die—’

‘Nice place,’ Harry said, unperturbed. His eyes raked over the bare dome, and Michael abruptly felt as if he was seeing the place through his father’s eyes. The ship’s lifedome, his home for decades, was a half-sphere a hundred yards wide. Couches, control panels and basic data entry and retrieval ports were clustered around the geometric centre of the dome; the rest of the transparent floor area was divided up by shoulder-high partitions into lab areas, a galley, a gym, a sleeping area and shower.

Suddenly the layout, Michael’s few pieces of furniture, the low single bed, looked obsessively plain and functional.

Harry walked across the clear floor to the rim of the lifedome; Michael, whisky warming in his hand, joined him reluctantly. From here the rest of the
Crab
could be seen. A spine bristling with antennae and sensors crossed a mile of space to a block of Europa ice, so that the complete ship had the look of an elegant parasol, with the lifedome as canopy and the Europa ice as handle. The ice block - hundreds of yards wide when mined from Jupiter’s moon - was pitted and raddled, as if moulded by huge fingers. The ship’s GUTdrive was buried inside that block, and the ice had provided the ship’s reaction mass during Michael’s journey out here.

Harry ducked his head, searching the stars. ‘Can I see Earth?’

Michael shrugged. ‘From here the inner Solar System is a muddy patch of light. Like a distant pond. You need instruments to make out Earth.’

‘You’ve left yourself a long way from home.’

Harry’s hair had been AS-restored to a thick blond mane; his eyes were clear blue stars, his face square, small-featured - almost pixie-like. Michael, staring curiously, was struck afresh at how young his father had had himself remade to look. Michael himself had kept the sixty-year-old body the years had already stranded him in when AS technology had emerged. Now he ran an unconscious hand over his high scalp, the tough, wrinkled skin of his cheeks. Damn it, Harry hadn’t even kept the colouring - the black hair, brown eyes - which he’d passed on to Michael.

Harry glanced at Michael’s drink. ‘Quite a host,’ he said, without criticism in his voice. ‘Why don’t you offer me something? I’m serious. You can buy Virtual hospitality chips now. Bars, kitchens. All the finest stuff for your Virtual guests.’