Moving Mars (52 page)

Its all so primitive, Charles said.

Doing my best, Leander said, grinning. Ready when you are, my captain.

Galena Cameron came into the center from above, deftly maneuvered around Leander, and faced me. Madam Vice President

Casseia, please.

Were ready. Were getting clean images from outside. The equipments meshed and the arbeiters seem to be functioning.

Tell Mars were going to do it, I said to Leander.

Five hours? Leander asked.

If we tweak all the descriptors just right, Charles said. Hergesheimer squeezed in beside Galena, his face slick with sweat. He was terrified.

I felt calm. I pushed from the corner and reached for Charless hand. He clasped mine strongly. Were all here for you, I said.

My orders, Casseia?

Take us someplace far, far away, I said. Someplace safe and wonderful. Someplace new.

I think I have just the place, he said. Excuse me.

He settled back into his chair and connected one last optic lead, long fingers working expertly. We watched the back of his head, the gray nano clamps attached to his cranium, the patterns of his black hair.

Cradled in a sturdy frame of the old bases central control panel, the QL thinker projected a multicolored circus of complex shapes. The shapes had edges. The edges smoothed and the geometries became fluctuating blobs.

In a foamed rock alcove a meter away, the tweaker itself, and the force disorder pumps that maintained its sample of atoms at absolute zero, awaited the QLs instructions.

Charles closed his eyes.

Should we strap in? Galena asked nervously, her voice little more than a whisper.

No need, Leander said, licking his dry lips. Do anything you feel comfortable with.

Were going, Charles said.

I glanced at the outside views stacked atop one another on the console, Mars directly below us, Marss limb with suns corona flaring on black space, clouds of pinpoint stars, graphic of targeted galactic region, graphic of tweaker status.

The QL was now translating human measurements and coordinates into descriptor language. The interpreter spoke in a clear female voice, Particle redescription complete. First destination, first approximation, complete. The interpreter presented its own private estimation of how things were going: red lines growing as the QL addressed and tweaked descriptors within the supercold sample, then applied the samples changing qualities to all particles within the mass and near vicinity of the moon.

Well need at least half an hour to find out where we are and calculate how far off we are, Hergesheimer said.

Right, Leander said. The position fed into the QL would automatically correct for the movement of our target star in the ten thousand Earth years since its image began a light-speed journey, but other factors made exactitude difficult.

The room felt colder. The displays blanked, my arms numbed, my vision filled with fringes and distortions. I felt no sensation of movement, no momentous change whatsoever. Unlike anything in previous human history, tweaking involved no machinery, detonated no fuel, wasted no energy as heat and noise. The process had very little drama. The results would have to make up for that

The displays flicked back on. My arms seemed cold, my legs hot, but I did not feel ill. My companions blinked, opened their eyes as if from a brief nap.

Charles moaned slightly, then apologized under his breath. Ill be with you in a minute, he said.

Where are we? Leander asked.

I saw nothing in all the external views but stars. Mars had vanished. The background darkness, however, was enlivened by thick, interwoven wisps of faint color. Some of the stars seemed fogged, broader and less well-defined than pinpoints. I had never seen a sky like it in my life. Beautiful and terrifying. My blood pounded in my ears, my throat went dry, and I coughed into my fist. For a moment, I felt a rush of claustrophobia. This old tunnel, trapped in a moon tiny as moons go, but huge as rocks go.

And this old battered black rock had gone very far, incomprehensibly far.

There were no human beings within ten thousand light-years, ninety-five thousand trillion kilometers. We were surrounded by billions of kilometers of this vacuum-thin star mist and nothing else, could not know where we were, might be lost.

I forced my fingers to unclench and took several deep breaths.

Hergesheimer and Cameron worked quietly and quickly, drawing together all of their equipment to process the images and calculate position.

Hergesheimer swore under his breath. We need more specifics on family dispersion for this group, he told Cameron, pointing to five stars wreathed in blue haze, and she quickly calculated on her slate, forgoing the computers attached to the equipment.

Thats group A-twenty-nine, EGO 23-7-6956 through 60, she said.

Theres the target. Hergesheimer fingered a toggle beneath the display and swung our view, then pointed to a brilliant, tiny, unfogged spot centered in cross-hairs, barely more than a point against the wispy blackness. Were off by sixty billion kilometers, he said, and then, admiringly, he added, Not bad for a first approximation. His admiration quickly turned somber. But this isnt horseshoes. Were outside the orbit of the farthest planet by fifty-four billion kilometers. He examined his equipment, nodded with an intense frown, and said, Gentlefolks, if it matters after what weve just done There are seven planets in our target system, three immense gas giants, very young, two to five times bigger than Jupiter, four small rocky worlds close to the star, and in between, lots of empty- space situated just right for a comfortable orbit, with nothing to avoid but a diffuse asteroid belt.

But that wont mean anything if we dont make a slight correction. Hergesheimer looked at me, swallowed hard, and nodded, as if acknowledging this was all worth being slightly uncool over.

Charles? Leander said.

QLs getting the corrections and translating now, Charles said. Well move again in five minutes.

Deep within Phobos, something shifted with a grinding bass groan that sounded alive and monstrous. The stations insulated walls vibrated. All of us except Charles looked at each other uneasily.

Weve heard that before, not as loud, Leander said. Weve jerked this moon around a lot recently. Different tidal stresses.

And more to come, Cameron said.

There shouldnt be any problems, Leander assured us. The stresses are minor. But the noise is impressive

Cameron pushed up beside me. Theres a rec room with direct view, she said. The miners must have added it before the last map update. I sent an arbeiter to dust it and see if the outside armor would open. Dr. Hergesheimer doesnt need more help until after we arriveeverythings automatic now. Id like to experience the move Id like company, too. Do they need you right here, right now?

Charles seemed oblivious, but I did not want to leave him. Go ahead, I said. Ill stay here. Cameron gave me an eager, anxious look, backed away, spun around with the expert grace of a Belter, and took a tunnel leading to the surface.

Hergesheimer said, Shes young. I dont even look through optical telescopes any more; its not worth the effort. The eyes see nothing.

I wouldnt mind seeing direct, Leander said. Well all take a peek when we finish moving.

I still straggled to absorb the enormity of the region of space around us, the hundreds of thousands of stars, clouds of gas and dust.

Distance not important. Distance does not exist except as values within descriptors.

Are you all right? Leander asked me, and I shook my head. My cheeks were wet; spherical glittering tears drifted slowly toward my feet in the weak pull of Phobos.

Sad? Charles asked, turning toward me. His face seemed extraordinarily peaceful, unnaturally relaxed and unconcerned. I realized Leanders question had pulled him away from his concentration.

No, I said. A sense of scale. Lost. I just dont know what will awe me any more.

Charles turned away, eyes languid. Making a mistake will awe every one of us, he said quietly. Destiny tweak.

That phrase again, so often denied. I faced Leander and poked a finger not gently into his chest. In a whisper, I said, Ive heard that before. You said it was nothing.

Charles said it was nothing, Leander said, shrugging. He mumbles odd things when hes down there with the QL.

Do you know what he means? I asked.

Leander shook his head wryly. I thought I did, once, years ago.

Well?

We invoked a destiny tweak to clear up logical contradictions. Also, to explain why we could not travel in time, except as instantaneous travel in space affects our position in time. It seemed very classical and naive, and yet It was that simple.

What was simple?

With your enhancement, you must understand what the problems are.

Travel at speeds that outstrip a photon is logically difficult in a causal universe, I said.

Nobodys much cared about a causal universe for over a century, Leander said. But descriptor theory puts everything back on a different sort of causal basis, albeit cause and effect are ultimately limited to the rules governing descriptor interactions.

I understood that much: all external phenomena, all of nature, is simply a kind of dependent variable, the results of descriptor function. Now I had lost myself in mathematical abstractions and had to backtrack. So is there logical contradiction or not? I asked.

The rules of descriptor-function are the only real logic, Leander said. We dont need the destiny tweak.

What was it?

We never found it, Leander said, shaking his head reluctantly. I dont know why he mentioned it

What was it? I persisted.

A variation on the old many-worlds hypothesis, he said. We thought that moving a mass instantaneously to a point beyond its immediate information sphere simply recreated the mass in a universe not our own. But we have no evidence for other universes.

Charles said, Stephen, I dont feel right about this one. The QL is looking at too many truths.

Leander frowned. What can we do, Charles?

Hang on, Charles said, voice thin. His hand reached up. From behind his couch, instinctively, I grasped it. He sighed, squeezed my fingers painfully, and said, Damn. Were missing something.

Hergesheimer listened with his forehead creased. What is he talking about? he asked.

Get Galena in here, Charles said. Please hurry. Dont let her look outside.

Hergesheimer started down the tunnel.

Can I do something, Charles? I asked, still holding his hand.

The QL has found a bad path, Charles said. Dont look outside.

I felt a directionless jerk. With my other hand, I grabbed the back of Charless couch. Leander became indistinct, wrapped in shadow; he seemed to turn a corner. His mouth moved but he did not speak, or I could not hear him. A whining sound came from behind me, then enveloped me like a cloud of gnats in a nursery full of hungry babies. Bump, bump, bump, I seemed to keep running into myself, yet I did not move, there was only one of me. Collapsing forms around Leander gave me a clue to what I felt: he appeared to be wrapped in deflating balloon images, each slapping itself down around him, making him jerk and shiver: the momentum of colliding world-lines. The cabin filled with collapsing images of the past, but of course that made no sense at all.

I turned my eyes to the displays and saw ghosts of images unsuited to electronics and optics, images that could not be reassembled correctly from their initial encoding. The math was failing. The physics of our instrumentality had become inadequate. We could not see, could not process the information, could not re-imagine reality.

The feeble whining increased in pitch. Still slapped by my colliding past selves, I sensed a direction for the sound and turned to face it, the star-shaped chamber all corners and wrong sight-lines, angles senseless. I recognized a shape, saw Hergesheimers face gone cubist and flys eye multiple, and the face became Galena Camerons, and I was able to put together an hypothesis that Hergesheimer was holding Galena and she was making the whining sound, eyes closed, hands floating around her face like pets demanding attention.

Hergesheimers lips formed shapes: I did not look.

And then, Outside.

And, She did.

Leander had moved and I could not locate him in the diverging angles. I still held Charless hand. The fingers wrapped in mine became external. Charles held an inverse of my hand. It didnt matter.

The whole popped. The final slap was horrendous, soul-jarring. My bones and muscles felt as if they had been powdered and reconstituted.

Drops of blood floated in the air. I took a deep breath and choked on them. Something had scored my skin in long, thin, shallow razor passes. My clothing had been sliced as well, and the interior surfaces of the chamber seemed to have been lightly grooved, as if a sharp-tipped flail had thrashed through the cabin. Leander moaned and held his hands to his face. They came away bloody. Hergesheimer hugged Cameron to his breast. She lay in his arms unresisting and unmoving. All slashed, all bloody.

Charles let go of my hand. Where we had held hands, there were no cuts. The back of my hand might have been a picture of cat practice, except where his fingers had covered.

The interior of the chamber felt deadly cold. The displays and electronics still did not function. Then, they returned, and outside, we saw stars, and the brightness of a much closer sun.

For a moment, nobody said anything.

We need medical attention, Leander said, holding out his hands and inspecting his bloody clothing. We had brought a fresh medical kit in the shuttle. I went to fetch it. It seemed imperative that I take charge and become nursemaid.

Otherwise, I thought, I might end up just like Galena, limp as a doll, eyes shut tight, lips drawn in endless riddle.

Leander had plunged deep in conversation with Charles when I returned. I applied medicinal nano directly from a vial with a sterile sponge. Everyone stripped down to receive my ministrations. Hergesheimer undressed Galena, who did not resist. We wiped each other, the touch itself reassuring, healing, an orgy of medicinal tenderness.