“It seems that even without fuel, spinning the pseudo-neutronium core up to speed still creates frame dragging and a gravitic node point—think of a singularity shaped like a doughnut with a spot of normal-metric space in the middle—which means that particles of normal matter can be sped up to lightspeed without requiring infinite energy or suffering infinite Lorenz contraction. Or, I should say, technically, the accelerated particle seems to some observers, those looking at it sideways, to have those properties, whereas an observer directly in front of or behind the singularity doughnut, looking through the hole, will see no change. My point is that even without the fuel, Ain can use the singularity drive effect to broadcast dark matter packets at lightspeed, in order to be able to send an entire human brain worth of information across the lightyears with little or no signal loss. Are you still committed to this plan?”
They both nodded assent, Mickey glumly, Trey eagerly.
Del Azarchel said, “During the Silurian Period, the Panspermian Forerunners were destroyed and scattered, and the Dominations and Dominions composing the Archonate were broken up into their separate Dysons, strandworlds, ringworlds, cloudworlds, and Jupiter Brains. Those whose solar systems which still show observable traces of industrial activity or stellar engineering are the targets to which Ain wishes to broadcast the minds of the human volunteers, blindly risking oblivion in the hope that a working receiver, raised in reply to vanguard signals, might be able to catch them and reconstruct emulations of them. The dangers they face, they will face with more spirit, knowing you two have braved the risk before them.
“Without this sacrifice, this vessel can move no farther, nor Rania be saved, nor, if the inevitable cliometry we have seen back in the human Empyrean we left behind us is any judge, does the race of man have any future in this galaxy. Will you face it? I can join in the danger only in spirit, only in the prayers of a grateful race, but I cannot share your glory.”
Their plans had been discussed in detail long before, but Del Azarchel had the habit of speech making from his many years when this was his profession. Montrose had never actually seen Del Azarchel at his business before; it was something of a surprise to Montrose to see the spine of Mickey grow straight, and to see Trey smile and, for once, look utterly focused on the matter at hand, alert and bright, and then to see a spirit of resolve and fortitude blaze in both of their eyes like hero worship.
Montrose wondered if drugs or some electromagnetic brain-hoax was involved. The words of Blackie just did not seem that impressive to him.
Of course, he had seen Blackie naked in the showers at Space Camp back in Africa, back in the days when Africa was one continent and not two, and had seen him puking drunk, crying about his mommy, and had felt the man on his back when he carried him home from the bar, so maybe there were no tens nor hundreds of generations of glamour to fog the gaze of Montrose when he looked at Blackie. All he saw was a sneaky and smug Hispanosphere pilot who murdered his way into a throne Montrose, when mad, had accidentally made available to him.
Blackie said other things Montrose did not hear, because he knew the plan already. After the Solitudines Vastae Caelorum set sail, the physical version of Mickey and Trey were going to stay here on Torment, and try to find some way to send and receive brain signals, to make contact with their twins, Exmictlan and Exprima, trapped in the Ain mindspace.
Del Azarchel explained, “Divarication madness in both the living and the postbiological version of yourself is kept at bay when frequent mind-to-mind contact is maintained. For one thing, the information of your sense impressions sent continuously into the emulations of their midbrain and cortex will make them feel alive, feel like they and you are one and the same. You must stay here and stay alive in order to keep them sane.”
Trey said, “Is that why we cannot make a second copy to send with you? I did so want to see the Swan Princess rescued and see whether Montrose will achieve his dream!”
Del Azarchel, instead of making the expected snide remark about Montrose being sure to fail, spoke in a humble or even haunted voice. “My emulation traveling this same journey went mad. I simply did not know. There was no experimental evidence of the effects of divarication due to long-term isolation before the Bellerophron was launched. At times, in my dreams, I could feel—perhaps it was some resonance effect, but if so—no matter. Never mind that. There is no point in bringing along spare copies of you, Mrs. de Concepcion, just to watch you and your husband slowly go insane. Indeed, there is no torture as exquisite.”
Trey said, “What was it like? To be in two places at once? Two of you?”
Del Azarchel said, “It was having one soul with two minds. I could not read the mind of Jupiter, if that is what you are asking, but as more and ever more of his structure was taken over by my emulations as the lesser emulations, by a natural and ruthless evolution, went mad and became raw material. Mindspace is an Edenic form of being, is it not? They had nothing to live for, and I did. So as Jupiter became fully me, the greater our synchronization became, despite the vast differences in intelligence. We still felt the same way about the same things, even if what we thought was different. Whenever I met him mind to mind, it was as neat and nice a match as fitting hand to glove, or more so. I went from being two minds to one mind with no discomfort.
“However, I was out of contact during my long, slow, doomed attempt to found a second and better race of men in the Sagittarius Arm. When I returned from that last voyage, Jupiter had lost my soul. We were no longer one, and could not merge, nor did I ever understand him again, on an emotional—or any—level. I suppose all fathers have such sad farewells in their past, but for it to happen to a being who was both my exact twin and my undoubted superior in mind—I tell you, I was happy when Montrose killed him. Happy? That is not a word for me. Let us say I had one less source of discontent, one less impediment to my will. Nonetheless, it is a grief I would spare you, if I could, by trying to arrange with Ain that your mundane and electronic versions will be in close radio neural contact as far as possible.”
Del Azarchel turned to Montrose. “You will have to command your ship to allow me access to the mind replication and broadcast circuits, as well as the long-range astronomical instruments, if I am to set up the process for Ain. Unless you want to oversee the details?”
Montrose said, “You are the brain-emulation expert and have been doing it for longer than me. I am the suspended-animation expert, and what we are about to face in terms of a journey of this length will stretch even my skills to the limit. I got too much in my mouth to take another bite. This problem is yours to chew.”
Del Azarchel said, “You have time and more for your research. We can freeze our bodies and use the mind of Tormentil for our blackboard. This vessel cannot depart for many a year, until enough human minds have been cast into the stars where Ain suspects some remnant of the ancient Forerunner races lingers, or some young unmet race, to start the emissary process. Once the first generation of human emissaries has been exchanged, Ain’s own communication systems will be able to shoulder the necessities.”
Montrose said, “Another delay. What if Ain never agrees to Mickey’s plans?”
Del Azarchel smiled. “Do you recall once, long ago, a swan told us that you and I were like Caliban and Tarzan, absurdly primitive beings compared to the monsters in the heavens? Well, one of those monsters is Ain, a machine made of a cloud of dendrites larger in mass than our solar system circling a sun larger than ours, a machine made by an extinct race of whelks or clams who never lied to each other or told less than the whole truth. I suspect Mickey will have a psychological edge when it comes to the bargaining process.”
Montrose said, “You and I could pretend we did not hate each other long enough to prevent Ain from using us to undermine the other.”
Del Azarchel shook his head. “In my life, once I was at oneness with Jupiter, a brain so large all words fail. And this being is far wiser, far more insightful, than that. Unless I were willing, hones
tly and entirely, to foreswear my hate for you, and you to foreswear your love for my Rania, we could not fool Ain. But with no deception at all, and no mental reservations, I can trust Mictlanagualzin of Tormentil—because I know his true name. I know his character.
“And he knows mine. No one who serves me can ever truly come to hate me, because I know the hearts of men. Of course I trust him.
“So he can tell Ain that mankind will not cooperate without any deception, because his desire to see us sail is less than his desire to see the men of Tormentil live free.”
Montrose whistled. From a nearby swarm of glittering firefly-glinting units shaped like lacy-winged courtiers, the nearest of several identical figurines darted down to him. A tiny figurine, no more than six inches tall, of a princess with a fairy wand, landed on his finger. “Twinklewink, this is Montrose. Do you recognize me?”
The tiny figurine curtseyed. “Montrose, Menelaus Illation, morganthic husband of Her Serene Highness Rania of Tellus, mistress of this vessel. How may I serve?”
“This is an order. Now hear this: Allow Del Azarchel access to the mind replication and broadcast circuits, as well as the long-range astronomical instruments. He is locked out of any and every other central system, until and unless I specifically order otherwise. End.”
“Roger,” said the figurine and flew over to land on the finger of Del Azarchel.
Del Azarchel, with many an orotund and flattering word, said his farewells, and walked a little ways away. There were no control interfaces in this ship, no bridge, nor need of any. Instead, Del Azarchel seated himself on the green grass beneath a white-blossomed cherry tree and spoke to the fairy figure on his finger. She raised her wand, and images, data streams, and memory chains were electronically distributed into his cortex and midbrain. He closed his eyes, and his skin turned white.
Montrose shook hands for the last time with Mickey. “Make sure only volunteers go!” he said. “Being trapped in the mind of an alien being is hell.”
Mickey said, “Menelaus, I shall not fail you. I foresee that you will meet your princess again, nor will this be the end of your travails, but more than this galaxy will be changed by the love you bear her. You think yourself selfish, seeking nothing but this one woman, but all this is arranged by Providence. Sorrow and pain is all along the path before you, but beyond it, I see, like a mountain in the distance, the final end of that path, beyond the walls of this world. Therefore, I do not say farewell, for a spirit of prophecy tells me we shall meet again, not in this life, but in a country of joy. I say only Godspeed to you, and may the ghost grant you the strength to cross the darker parts of the cruel path awaiting!”
Montrose found nothing to say, but gave Mickey a bear hug.
Trey stood on her tiptoes and kissed Montrose on the cheek. “It has to be a happy ending. It has to! Otherwise the universe doesn’t make sense, does it? But you have to tell me: Is she really real? The real one?”
Montrose said, “She is alive. I know. I ain’t got no clue how I know, but I do. I’ll get her back. I know that, too. I am in love. That makes her real.”
Without bothering to strip, the two of them, holding hands, stepped down into the fluid of the pool, which also served as a suspension coffin and neural reading unit. Nanomachines held in suspension in the clear liquid gathered around them like swarms of diamonds. The surface grew solid and turned opaque as a mirror. Less than half an hour later, an airlock opened beneath the pool, and the solid disk of icy material carrying the two fell away from the spinning vessel.
The landing boat detached from the axial dock and swooped after them, growing the wings it would use for reentry, once her passengers were aboard.
Montrose raised his hand and commanded the little sun of his miniature world to go out. Then he bowed his head. His skin turned white as he entered biosuspension. From his feet, like the concentric ripples seen in a pond disturbed by a stone, pale hues spread across grass and trees as all the vegetable life entered suspended animation.
The Solitudines Vastae Caelorum then was silent, and all around the circular garden, the quiet stars turned and turned.
3
Cradle of the Stars
1. Parity
A.D. 80100
Twinklewink, the tiny fairy queen, landed on the ice-white nose of Montrose and commanded him to wake. Waking from suspension no longer required hours or days of cellular readjustment, nor even a few minutes of nausea. Montrose sat up suddenly, fully awake, and found himself thrown toward the ceiling. He flew two yards into the air, striking a mass of green leaves and hard branches and twigs that covered the ceiling.
“What the pox?” he snarled, trying to extricate himself.
The light here was gloomy and wavering, dusty beams swaying like moonlight seen through a shifting canopy. He was in Rania’s bedroom, but the futon and tatami mats, the thinking glasses and painted wall screens were covered over with leafy debris, mold, and a nest of clinging branches. The light came from the arched window overlooking the circular garden of the ship.
He moved hand over hand, needing to tap his foot on the leaf mass or bent floor matting only once every yard or two. The window had three or four prodigious branches thrust into the opening, and the action of clinging twigs had broken the window frame in several places.
He pushed his head and one shoulder out through the narrow gap in the wood, scraping himself on the bark. Outside, the lanterns of the miniature sun were quenched, and the whole area between the ring of the garden at the circumference and the black sphere of the rive core at the axis was crowded with a fantastical array of knots, loops, and labyrinthine twists and spirals of wood. Whether it was one tree or many, Montrose could not be sure, but the effect of low gravity on the Earthly trees had been well known ever since the Second Space Age. He knew he was seeing hundreds of years of growth, maybe a thousand.
“Twinklewink!” he snapped. “How long has the carousel been spinning at less than one gravity of acceleration?”
The little fairy queen fluttered over and landed on his shoulder, a spark of acetylene light gleaming from her wand. “Three thousand three hundred years, Captain Montrose.”
That was very close to half their travel time.
He and Blackie had woken up out of suspension to share a glass of wine at the halfway point of the voyage. A tradition as old as star-sailing hallowed the occasion: it was the moment of weightless maneuvering when the ship was to rotate and place her sails behind her, to occlude the aft stars and let the fore stars for the first time become visible.
Montrose had then returned to biosuspension. Del Azarchel evidently had not.
He said, “Show me the energy use logs.” The fairy queen waved her wand, and the information as if by magic appeared as visions in his cerebral cortex, and in specialized receiving cells in his short-term memory. Del Azarchel had used the mind replication and broadcast machinery at the core and spun the singularity disk up to speed. He had pointed the long-range instruments at 41 Cancri, the capital star of the Praesepe Cluster.
Montrose said, “Did Blackie tell you to slow the rotation of the ship?”
“No, sir. But there is sufficient electromagnetic friction to cause appreciable slowing over three thousand years, if the correction magnets have insufficient energy. Much of the energy budget had been expended by Dr. Del Azarchel during his twenty-seven broadcasts of his brain information over the years.”
“He is not allowed to give orders to you, Twinklewink!”
“That is not precisely true, sir. You gave him permission to use the mind replication system, and at no point did you countermand the order. I was careful to examine his actions, and I detected nothing that could harm the ship or the mission, or even cause humiliation. I did not allow him to use any energy that had been allocated to other tasks.”
“What about this giant tree?”
Twinklewink said, “It does not harm the ship nor impede the mission. If you will like it pruned or removed, please state order
s to that effect in clear and actionable language.”
Montrose merely growled. “How about unblocking this window so I can get out and go clout the bastard?”
Twinklewink waved her wand at the twisted tree trunks through which Montrose had thrust his head and one shoulder. The bark turned white as it entered hibernation, and then some sequence of orders to the cellular nanomachinery now controlling the vegetable cells caused the tree trunks touching him to rot and go soft. He pulled his way clear and, moments later, was bounding in the quarter gravity from branch to curling branch, leaping lightly as a cricket along a crazed and crooked curving roadway of wood.
Near the overgrown and ruined garden at the outer radius of the ship, Del Azarchel was seated on a low-hanging branch, a teacup in his hand, staring out through the transparent hull.
“Ah! Montrose,” he began, coming lightly to his feet as Montrose bounded from a nearby limb down across the air toward him. “I have just made an astonishing discovery…”
Without warning or greeting or word of defiance, Montrose struck him across the face with his fist, sending the other man head over heels off the narrow branch in a parabola of spilled tea. The china cup and saucer went flying into the green leaves.
Del Azarchel fell some ten feet to the soil, which was covered with a leafy mold that would have broken his fall even in full gravity. He twisted in midair to land in a crouch and a spray of leaf muck expanding from his boots. His green eyes blazed like the eyes of a wolf, full of murder, and he drew two liquid knives from his sleeve. The blades slithered into their full extension and changed state from liquid to solid with a snap of noise.
“You shall die for that affront!” he said with a smile. There was blood on his teeth. “Whenever the better angels of my nature urge that I should spare you, always you contrive some further indignity.”
“Pox you.” Montrose sneered. “You were rutting about with the machinery while I slept. What’d you expect?”