Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring (43 page)

He ignored the messages, letting Virtual copies of himself handle them; if there was anything devastating they’d let him know.

Peering into the crowded space ahead, and after his decades of isolation in the bleak outer lands of the Solar System, Poole felt a pang of absurd claustrophobia. He was driven on by curiosity as well as by a residual concern for Miriam Berg and her crew; but now that his year-long journey in from the Oort Cloud was complete he found he really, really didn’t want to be here, back among the fetid worlds of humankind.

Harry was studying him, his youthful brow creased. ‘Relax, son,’ he said. ‘It was never going to be easy.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, shut up,’ Poole snapped. Even as he spoke he was aware of an odd feeling of relief at having someone, or something, reasonably tangible outside his own head to react to. ‘I should put you in an electronic bottle labelled “Dad”, and take you out when I feel the need of another patronizing fatherly homily.’

Harry Poole grinned, unmoved. ‘Just doing my job,’ he murmured.

Now the
Crab
, drive still blazing ahead of her, was approaching the most dense knot of ships in the sky. The cloud of vessels, as if sensing the approach of the
Crab
, began to part.

Inside that firefly mist Michael could make out the lines of something huge, a splash of green against the murky pink of Jupiter.

‘That’s it,’ Poole said, finding his voice hoarse. ‘The ship from the future. Time to go to work ...’ He snapped a command into the air.

The crowded universe outside the lifedome was clouded by a sudden hail of pixels which danced like dust motes around the
Crab
, slowly congealing into planes, orbs and strands around the lifedome. Harry squirmed in his seat, mouth open, as he watched the huge Virtual take shape around the ship. At last they were looking out through eyes which were each at least a hundred yards wide, with eyelids which swept like rainstorms over the glistening lenses. A nose like a vast engineering project, with nostrils like rocket nozzles, obscured the
Crab
’s GUTdrive module; and huge sculpted ears sailed alongside the lifedome.

A mouth, whale-sized, opened moistly.

‘My God,’ Harry breathed. ‘It’s you, isn’t it? We’re looking out through your face.’

‘I couldn’t think of any other way to be sure we were identified properly. Don’t worry: the Virtual is all show; it’s not even as sentient as you are. It repeats a five-second phrase of greeting, over and over again.’

‘So how will they hear what it has to say?’

‘Harry, the Virtual is two miles high,’ Poole said, irritated. ‘Let them lip-read!’

Harry swivelled his head, surveying the nostrils, the cable-like hairs above the cabin, skin pores the size of small asteroids. ‘What a disgusting experience,’ he said at last.

‘Shut up and watch the show.’

Now there were ships all around the camouflaged
Crab
. Poole recognized Navy ships which bristled with weapon ports, science platforms open and vulnerable, even one or two inter-moon skitters which should surely never have been allowed so close. Many of the larger craft followed the same basic design as the
Crab
, with drive unit and living quarters separated by a stem; from this distance the ships looked like lighted matchsticks, scattered through space.

‘How do you think the men from the future will react to us?’ Harry asked with sudden nervousness.

Poole, glancing across, saw Harry chewing a nail, a habit he remembered from a distant childhood. ‘Maybe they’ll shoot us out of the sky,’ he said maliciously. ‘What do you care? You’re tucked up in bed on Earth, well away from any danger.’

Harry looked at him reproachfully. ‘Michael, let’s not go over that again. I’m a Virtual, but I have my identity, my sense of being.’

‘You think you do.’

‘Isn’t that the same thing?’

‘Anyway, I doubt if we’re in any danger,’ Poole said. ‘The future people haven’t made any attempt to use weapons so far; why should they now?’

Harry nodded grudgingly. ‘True.’ After the future ship had settled into its orbit around Jupiter there had been several attempts by Navy ships to approach the craft. The future humans hadn’t responded, or fired on the Navy ships; they’d simply run away, faster than they could be tracked.

‘Maybe they haven’t any weapons,’ Harry said.

Poole pursed his lips. ‘That’s possible, I guess. They do have their super-drive, though.’

‘I know there’s speculation that could be some kind of hyperspace drive,’ Harry said.

‘Maybe. But if that’s true we’ve no idea how it works. It’s not possible to extrapolate from existing technologies, the way I speculated about singularity technologies.’

‘Maybe it’s not a human invention. Maybe it’s alien.’

‘Anyway, I don’t think we’re in any danger of being fired on; and if they want us to come in they’ll not run away.’

‘How reassuring,’ the Virtual murmured.

Now the last few layers of craft peeled away before them, the GUTdrive fire-sparks scrabbling aside like scared insects.

The future craft was revealed, like a fragment of landscape emerging through a layer of cloud. The
Crab
’s drive died at last, and Poole’s Virtual, mouthing its idiot words of greeting, loomed over a disc of green Earth a quarter-mile wide. Poole could clearly make out the ring of ancient stones at its centre, like grey-brown scars against the greenery. A belt of anonymous-looking dwellings encircled the stones, and beyond the belt grass grew as in some surrealist’s vision, all the way to the edge of the world; the green of it clashed in his eyes with the purple-pink of Jupiter, so that it was as if the craft were encircled by a scar of indeterminate colour.

Close to the rim Poole made out a splash of metal, a scarred crater in the grass. Could that be a boat from the
Cauchy
?

Sparks of light, like entrapped stars, were sprinkled over this floating fragment of Earth. And here and there Poole could see tiny, insect-like forms crawling across the landscape. People? He imagined faces upturned in wonder to his own vast, smiling mouth.

He scanned the lifedome’s instrument displays briskly, watching data chatter in on the lifeboat’s mass - about that of an asteroid - and its gravitational configuration and radiation characteristics.

‘I’ve seen pictures and I’ve read about it,’ Harry said, ‘but I don’t think I really believed it until now.’

‘It looks more fragile than I expected,’ Poole murmured.

‘Fragile?’

‘Look at it. Why build a timeship under a clod of earth like that, with so little protection? ... Unless, perhaps, you wanted to hide what you were doing.’

‘They can run, but they can’t fight,’ Harry said.

‘Yeah. Maybe these aren’t the heroic, superpowered gods from the future we anticipated after all. Maybe these people are refugees.’

Harry seemed to shiver. ‘Refugees from what?’

‘Well, at least they haven’t fled from us yet. Come on; let’s get to the boat and see if they will let us land.’

M
ichael Poole brought the
Crab
’s boat down near the grassy lip of the craft from the future, close to the wreckage of a lifeboat.

Followed by the Virtual of his father, he walked out onto a green plain. For a moment he felt disoriented. Beneath his feet there was grass, the blades coarse enough for him to feel them through the soft soles of his boots; globes the size of his fist hovered eight feet above him, giving off a Sol-like yellow warmth, and towards the centre of the disc-craft a concentration of the globes produced a cosy, Earthlike island of light. There was even a hint of blueness about the layer of atmosphere over the disc of land.

But above him - like some immense roof over creation - hung the banded clouds of Jupiter. It took a conscious effort not to cringe from that lowering sky.

‘You know,’ he said to Harry, ‘I found it quite hard to step out of the boat. I feel naked, standing here.’

‘I know what you mean.’ Harry took a deep, theatrical sniff. ‘But the air smells as good as the tests showed it to be. Why, you can even smell the grass growing.’ He bounced on his toes. ‘And near Earth-normal gravity, as we estimated from orbit.’

‘Quit showing off,’ Poole grumbled. ‘It’s hard to understand how anyone could have the guts to ride through time clinging to this damn thing.’ He thought of Berg huddled against this ground as the broken exotic-matter walls of the wormhole hurtled past her, and he felt an unfamiliar stab of protectiveness. Damn it, Berg could look after herself as well as anyone he’d known - certainly a lot better than he could himself - but nobody deserved to be put through such an experience.

His protectiveness began to fade to an uncertain guilt, as he wondered if he ought to hold himself responsible, if indirectly, for the chain of events which had resulted in this.

He watched Harry walk out of sight around the
Crab
’s boat; the craft, a cylindrical lump of metal still frosted from the chill of space, sat on this plain of grass as incongruous as a bullet on an altar-cloth.

‘My God,’ Harry called.

Poole followed his father. Harry stood, hands on hips, surveying the wrecked lifeboat they’d seen from the
Crab.

The boat had been sliced open like a ripe melon. The laser-strokes through the hull were razor-sharp - almost pleasing in their clarity and neatness. Poole could see how the interior of the craft had been scorched and melted, and how partitions had softened and flowed towards the soil.

‘Well, it’s no ordinary wreck,’ Harry said. ‘And look.’ He pointed to an intact hull panel. ‘See the registration?’

‘It’s from the
Cauchy
. Harry, this is Miriam’s boat, it has to be.’ A kind of helpless panic surged through him. ‘What the hell’s been done to her?’

‘Nothing, Michael. I’m all right. See?’

Poole whirled at the sound of the deep, slightly hoarse, and desperately familiar voice. He saw all of her as if in a blur - the tough, lively face, the thatch of cropped hair, eyes that looked soft with tears. Without willing it he found himself in her arms. Miriam was a few inches taller than Michael, and her slim body, encased in a coarse, pink jumpsuit, was tense for a moment, though her arms encirded his back; and then she relaxed, and the length of her body pressed against his. He buried his face in the soft warmth of her neck.

When he was able he released her, grasped her shoulders and peered into her face. ‘My God, Miriam, I thought you were dead. When I saw the lifeboat—’

She smiled, her lips thin. ‘Not very friendly of them, was it? But they haven’t done me any harm, Mike; they just’ - now the stiffness returned - ‘they just stop me from doing things. Maybe I’m getting used to it. I’ve had a year of it now ...’

‘And the journey through time? How was that?’

Her face seemed to crumple, before she regained control. ‘I survived it,’ she said.

Poole stepped away from her with a sense of embarrassment. He was aware of Harry standing close beside him, but kept his eyes averted from Harry’s face; he was two centuries old, and he was damned if he was going to put up with any more fatherly affection. Not right now.

There was a woman with Miriam, he saw now: as tall as Miriam, slightly scrawny, her thin, bony face young-looking and pretty - except for a dome of a shaven head, which Poole found it hard to keep his eyes away from. The woman regarded him steadily. Her pale-eyed gaze was somehow disturbing: Poole saw in it the naivety of youth overlaid with a kind of blank impassivity.

Harry stepped forward to the girl and held out his arms. ‘Well, Michael got his welcome; how about me?’

Michael groaned inwardly. ‘Harry—’

The girl swivelled her head to Harry and took a neat step back. ‘That would be pleasant if it were possible, sir,’ she said, her face solemn.

Harry grinned and shrugged theatrically. ‘Are my pixels showing again? Damn it, Michael, why didn’t you tell me?’

Berg leaned close to Poole. ‘Who’s the asshole?’

‘Would you believe, my father?’

Berg screwed up her face. ‘What an embarrassment. Why don’t you pull the plug? He’s only a Virtual.’

‘Not according to him.’

‘Michael Poole.’ Now the girl, having extricated herself from Harry’s attention, was facing Poole; her complexion was quite poor, the skin around her eyes bruised-looking and tired. Poole felt himself drawn to the weakness of this girl from the future - such a contrast to the high-technology superbeings he’d imagined in his wilder moments. Even the single-piece coverall she wore was, like Miriam’s, of some coarse, cheap-looking artificial fabric.

‘I’m Poole,’ he said. ‘You’ve already met my father.’

‘My name is Shira. I’m honoured to meet you.’ Her accent was modern-sounding but neutral. ‘Your achievements are still famous, in my day,’ the girl said. ‘Of course we would not be here to meet you without your Interface project—’

Berg cut in sharply, ‘Is that why you let them land, instead of blowing them out of the sky?’

‘We would not have done that, Miriam Berg,’ Shira said. She sounded vaguely hurt.

‘Okay, but you could have cut and run with your hyperdrive, like you did from the other ships—’

The word hit Poole like a slap to the face. ‘They
do
have a hyperdrive?’

Berg said sourly, ‘Sure. Now ask if she’ll let you inspect it.’

Harry pressed forward and pushed his young face close to the girl’s. ‘Why have you come here, to our time? Why has there been only one message from this craft to the rest of the Solar System?’

‘You have many questions,’ Shira said, holding her hands up before her as if to ward Harry off. ‘There will be time to answer you at leisure. But, please, you are our guests here; you must allow us to receive you into our hospitality.’

Harry pointed at the sliced-open wreckage of the
Cauchy
lifeboat. ‘Some hospitality you’ve shown so far.’