James P. Hogan (13 page)

And the nice thing about it was that none of the attachments to a social formula or lifestyle had to be permanent. The changes and contrasts of moving from one to another could provide a source of variety that could well prove essential to a healthy life. It could be an invaluable means of education, too. For what more effective way could there be of revealing the realities of someone else’s ideal than shuttling across a few miles of space and trying it for a while? And what better preparation could those distant descendants have for dealing with the conflicts that go to make up real human existence than to have lived with them all their lives?

So, what mix of objects would eventually drop into orbit above Hera? A variety of thriving, mutually supportive communities, ready to extend the pattern across a new world? Or mutually distrustful armed fortresses, seeking only their own territory to enclose and defend? Nobody knew. At the beginning of such a venture, nobody could.

That was the whole point.

The six-mile-circumference Ring surrounding the
Aurora
’s central hull like a wheel on an axle was attached by two immense pillars extending in opposite directions from an annular supporting structure set forward of midships, known as the Hub. Sofian science had established that gravity resulted from the electrical nature of matter, which had led to the development of techniques whereby the effect could be synthesized and controlled. When the ship was experiencing acceleration under the main drive, normal weight perpendicular to the internal decks was achieved by adjusting the angle of the simulated component vector. The vessel’s circular architecture about a central axle had been adopted as a fallback to enable g simulation by rotation in the event of the electrical system – a comparatively recent conception, still to be thoroughly proven – failing during the voyage.

The Ring was made up of twelve modules connected by isolating locks that could be closed in an emergency, and were built to varying shapes and designs, depending on function. Some housed multilevel conglomerations of architecture providing high-density living and working space, along with essential services and amenities – in effect, the “towns.” Others, such as Evergreen, contained agricultural levels and expanses of parkland to supplement the more intensive hydroponic and aeroponic cultivation carried out in the industrial complexes, and to offer a semblance of the open air. There was a sports and recreation center that included an artificial beach with waves; a zoo that did a good job of recreating a representative sample of Earth’s natural habitats; a college system offering courses in arts, crafts, and sciences; and a museum with departments dedicated to just about everything.

All in all, Korshak thought, surely a sufficient variety of interest and distractions to satisfy a lively and curious eleven-year-old boy. It mystified him that Mirsto Junior’s greatest source of fascination seemed to lie in the hidden underworld of machinery and its associated labyrinths of pipework, power lines, and ducting upon which the visible day-to-day existence depended. For somebody of that age to be attuned to the significance of such things was unusual. Korshak read it as a sign of some exceptional quality of insight that would one day find mature expression. As would any proud father harboring high hopes of the future for his son.

Vaydien had insisted on the name, after the Mirsto who had come with them from Arigane consented to being their firstborn’s godfather. The original Mirsto had died less than a year afterward. Korshak had long ago guessed that the reason for including an elderly contingent in the
Aurora
’s population had been to make room for the young who would soon start appearing.

Korshak and Mirsto Junior were on their way from Astropolis, the Ring module in which their residence was located, to the one called Jakka, where Masumichi still occupied his original apartment-laboratory duplex. Masumichi had called Korshak to say that he wanted to discuss something confidential, and Junior never missed a chance to visit Masumichi’s and see the robots. That meant that instead of one of the regular transit tubes that ran aboveground and through the public concourses, they were taking a maintenance line buried beneath the normally frequented levels. The world that it served was a gloomy, somber place of structural anchors, ladders, catwalks, cables and pipe mazes, and galleries filled with metal housings, control gear, and machines.

Immensity came cheaply to objects constructed in space. To somebody who had known the size and strength of the load-bearing members that had been needed to hold up large structures under their weight back on Earth,
Aurora
’s underpinnings appeared unnaturally slender and light. Korshak now knew this was because the “weight” experienced in the higher, inhabited levels was an artificial effect created locally for comfort and convenience, which manifested itself as a force between generators embedded in the decks and the objects they affected. Since the generators down here operated at a lower level – resulting in a light-headed, floating sensation inside the capsule – there wasn’t the same weight-compounding effect transmitted downward as happened when the attraction came from below. It was derived from the electrical forces that were the source of so many other miracles that Sofians took for granted, but quite how, Korshak still didn’t fully understand.

He paid less attention these days to his magic of old. He marveled that there should be such popular demand for his talents among people surrounded by real magic in which he was still discovering new wonders. The mechanical and physical concepts of Sofian science were familiar enough by now, but an intuitive grasp of the more abstract forms of theory and their mathematical expression eluded him. He had come to the conclusion that while some individuals seemed to be born with minds that naturally worked that way, his did not.

He had found that the most valuable contribution he could make stemmed from his knowledge of human behavior. As the population increased and diversified, a gaggle of sister worlds had begun to appear around
Aurora
in the way the mission planners had envisaged, the whole assembly being known by the collective name “Constellation.” It seemed to be a fact of nature that some people would always disagree over fundamentals that others considered obvious. The motives and long-term intentions of the founding groups were not always clear, and the Directorate’s advisors welcomed help in better understanding how two individuals could look at the same thing and each see something completely different. Some things that the psychologists couldn’t explain came easily to an illusionist.

A little over ten months previously, Constellation had caught up with the first of the cargo rafts sent on ahead before
Aurora
’s launch from Earth. It meant that a lot of additional construction materials had become available, and agitators and activists were campaigning for support to build various kinds of new habitats. One program that had gone ahead without delay was the conversion of the raft’s propulsion unit into a fast reconnaissance probe to be sent ahead to Hera, carrying a mixed robot survey and workforce. The information they would transmit back would surpass anything sent by the simple instruments that the old-world probe had carried. Conversion involved replacing the raft’s fusion drive with a baryonic-annihilation system of the kind developed by the Sofians in later years and used to power the
Aurora
. Korshak still had some learning to do when it came to this level of physics, but his understanding was that the baryonic-annihilation process yielded the total energy equivalent of the mass involved, making it somewhere around a thousand times more powerful than fusion. The new probe, designated
Envoy
, was scheduled to depart in a little over a month.

“Do you know what this makes me think of?” Mirsto Junior asked without taking his eyes from the window. They were in a six-seat capsule riding on a wave of magnetic flux through the transparent-walled transit tube.

“What?” Korshak asked.

“Being underneath one of the old cities back on Earth. Is this what it was like?”

“I honestly couldn’t tell you. I wasn’t from that time. The world I knew came a lot later.” Without the light and life that existed only a short distance above them, it certainly felt more like some lost and forgotten part of the old world, Korshak had to agree. Away from the airiness and the views of the stars, it was easy to forget that a fragile shell was all that separated them from the unimaginable vastness of space extending away in every direction outside. “Do you feel safer?” he asked curiously. “More enclosed and protected. Is that why you like it down here?”

Mirsto screwed his face up as he watched a bay of transformers and insulating supports pass by, illuminated briefly by the light from the capsule. “I don’t know. I’d never really thought about it like that. What’s there not to feel safe about?”

“Oh, the way things are out here. Just thin walls and radiation barriers between us and everything that’s out there. It’s not the same as having a few thousand miles of solid planet, and then a hundred miles of atmosphere outside that. People who lived on Earth talk about it sometimes.”

Mirsto shrugged vaguely. He had no concept of such things. For him, life was simply the way it had always been. “I like all the machines and tunnels and things down here that people never see,” he said. “It’s more real. The same as with magic.”

“Magic?” Korshak smiled in genuine surprise. “How do you mean?”

“Well… with a magic trick, there’s the bit that everyone sees, that they think is all of it. But there’s really another part, too, that they don’t see. What they see isn’t really what happens. It only seems that way because of what they don’t see. So what they don’t see is really real.” Mirsto gestured briefly at the surroundings they were passing through. “It’s the same with the world. People up there act as if what they see around them is all there is. But none of it could happen without what’s down here. So this has to be more real.” He fell silent as a new thought struck him, then resumed. “Did they have machines like this everywhere underneath Earth as well? I suppose they had to. But Earth went on and on for thousands of miles. How could anybody ever have made all those machines?”

Jakka was a rectangular, urban-style Ring module measuring roughly a half mile along a side. Masumichi’s place was in the center, which consisted mostly of high-density, multilevel construction surrounding pedestrian precincts and communication corridors. It housed a large residential population from mixed social and occupational backgrounds, giving it something of a cosmopolitan flavor, and much of the academic and research work associated with the sciences was concentrated there. The uppermost levels were fashioned in the manner of buildings set among open terraces and plazas below a roof of shutters that could present artificial sunlight in a daytime sky, or be opened to reveal the stars. It was named after a long-dead hero from Sofi’s founding years.

Korshak and Mirsto were met at the door by Kog, one of Masumichi’s new robots. The robots looked less like assemblages of plumbing these days, and possessed more versatile joints than earlier models – a result of new, self-regenerating materials that combined the toughness of metals with the flexibility of plastic. Another of Masumichi’s innovations was a photo-active facial coating that could be made to display variable patterns simulating human expressions. In addition, Kog featured a small panel in the upper chest that functioned as a screen to display graphical constructions or video clips, which proved a great aid to communication. Despite the years of ongoing research, there were still times when the ambiguities of natural human language could lead to unexpected interpretations and consequences.

“Hello,” Kog greeted. Its voice was lofty and a shade distant, as if it were addressing someone in the next room. Getting the finer graduations of intonation right was another subject still being worked on. The screen on its chest showed Hori, one of Masumichi’s innumerable relatives, grinning and waving excitedly from somewhere inside, with part of the famous sycamore tree visible in the background. Evidently, he was also visiting. He and Mirsto were about the same age, notorious partners in mischief and crime, and inseparable for most of the time. Hori fascinated Mirsto with snippets of science picked up from Masumichi, and strange rites and customs preserved by others in the family. Mirsto taught Hori magic tricks.

“Hi, Kog,” Mirsto returned; then, to the screen, “I thought you said you were going to the Hub with Aya and Rensh.”

“The low-gee court’s closed today,” Hori replied. “So we decided to go next week instead. Hey, guess what my dad says we’re doing for Calley’s birthday.”

“What?”

“He’s taking us to Plantation for three days. It’s over
fifty
miles away! Can you imagine that? There’s no town or tubes or ground cars at all. They grow stuff everywhere, and there are animals running loose. And you get to ride a real horse to go anywhere, or else you have to walk.”

“Yes, I’ve been there.” Mirsto turned the inevitable look toward his father. “Can we go again sometime?”

“We’ll see,” Korshak told him. “Maybe when your new sister’s a few months older. Your mother has her hands pretty full just now.” For convenience,
Aurora
preserved Earth’s traditional ways of dividing time, even though they no longer had any celestial significance.

“Months!”

Kog was leading them up the spiral staircase to the living area on the higher level, above which the tree was pruned to stop it engulfing the apartment completely. Masumichi’s living space was divided into annular sections around the central opening like parts of a pineapple ring, each with its own inner terrace open to the greenery. A year or so previously, several pairs of birds had mysteriously appeared and made nests in the branches, and from there proceeded to make free use of the surroundings as their adopted territory. The resulting distractions made it impossible for Masumichi to concentrate, not to mention the hygienic effects, and evicting them turned out to be a major operation. The accepted explanation was that the birds must have somehow found their way through the connecting locks from one of the agricultural or animal rearing modules, and thence through the ducting system. However, there were rumors among younger elements of Masumichi’s extended family that Hori and Mirsto had had a hand in it after visiting the zoo and learning that birds had lived free and unconstrained back on Earth.