Schild's Ladder (10 page)

And in a few tens of millennia, how much tighter would the deadening spiral of familiarity have wound itself? If the nine-thousand-year history of Zapata was too precious to lose, after ninety thousand years every tradition, every grain of sand on every inhabited planet, would be positively sanctified.

Still, those who believed they were being smothered could always flee, as he'd fled Turaev. Those who were happy sleepwalking into eternity could stay. He had no right to force this cusp on anyone.

He didn't have the right, but he didn't have the power either, nor did he aspire to it. He was only here to state an unpopular case, and see if anyone could be swayed. If he believed that the novo-vacuum offered the greatest wealth of opportunities the species had faced since leaving Earth, what else would it be but cowardice and dishonesty if he failed to argue against its destruction?

The cabin was beginning to feel less spacious by the minute. He left it and made his way around the ship, heading for the garden. He still felt jittery on the walkways, but his confidence was slowly improving.

The garden was almost deserted. He found a bench that faced away from the border, offering a view he could take in without vertigo. The reel of the blue polar stars was slow enough to be soothing, and with the foliage to break up their perfect arcs the whole sight seemed less mechanical.

The Doppler shift was a novelty to him, but the motion of the stars was familiar. The night sky on Turaev had looked just like this, during a mild Slowdown. The only thing missing was the sun, rising and setting with each turn.

He'd stood by the crib that would prepare his body for storage, and his mind for transmission. It had asked him to state his wishes on the eventual recycling of this, his birth flesh. His father had pleaded gently, “We could still wait for you. For a thousand years, if that's what you need. Say the word, and it will happen. You don't have to lose anything
.”

Someone passing glanced his way, curious at the sight of an unfamiliar passenger. Their Mediators interacted, and the stranger requested an introduction. Tchicaya hadn't asked not to be interrupted, and he allowed the exchange of information to proceed. Protocols were established, translators verified, mutually acceptable behavior delineated. There were no local customs to defer to, here, so their Mediators virtually flipped a coin to decide the manner in which they should greet each other.

“I don't believe we've met. My name's Sophus.”

Tchicaya stood and gave his own name, and they touched each other lightly on the left shoulder. “I've only been here a day,” he explained. “It's my first time off-planet; I'm still adjusting.”

“Do you mind if I join you? I'm waiting for someone, and this is the nicest spot to do it.”

“You'd be welcome.”

They sat on the bench. Tchicaya asked, “Who are you waiting for?”

“Someone who'll usurp your present role as most junior arrival. In fact, technically, I suppose she's already done that, but she's not yet in a state to show herself and claim the position.”

Tchicaya smiled at the memory of his own appearance in the crib. “Two arrivals in as many days?” That wouldn't have been so strange if someone had been following him from Pachner, but he hadn't come across anyone there who'd shared his travel plans. “They'll be running out of bodies if this keeps up. We'll have to squeeze the ex-acorporeals right into the ship's processors.”

Sophus frowned, mock-reprovingly. “Hey, no discrimination, please! It's up to them to volunteer, not us to suggest it.”

“The way they offered to share those cabins, to make room for new arrivals?”

Sophus nodded, apparently amused by the gesture. Tchicaya felt a twinge of unease, unsure whether he had just endeared himself to Sophus with some remarks that had been taken as evidence of bigotry, or whether he was just being hypersensitive. He wondered how long it would take Sophus to quiz him about his allegiance; either the answer had spread through the grapevine already, or Sophus was polite enough to make small talk for a while, and see if he could extract the information indirectly.

“Actually, we'll start some new bodies growing soon,” Sophus explained. “We were expecting a rush about now—give or take a decade. People will want to be here, it's what the models predicted.”

Tchicaya was puzzled. “What, because of Zapata?”

Sophus shook his head. “It's far too late to save Zapata. Maybe not literally, but most people are realistic enough not to think that they can turn back the tide at the very last moment. Look a bit further down the track. A century, a century and a half.”

“Ah.” In the right company, Tchicaya might have made a joke of the prospect Sophus was raising, but it wasn't the kind of casual blasphemy he'd try out on a stranger. And the truth was, he did feel genuine sorrow, in some ways deeper than his feelings about Turaev's eventual demise. Like the uprooting of some much-loved, long-sedentary ancestor through whom a scattered family remained in touch, the exodus of Earth's people, and the destruction of its soil, would scar the hearts of even the most cosmopolitan travelers.

“There's still talk of moving it,” Sophus said casually. “Pushing a white dwarf into the solar system, to carry it away. Sirius B is the obvious candidate.” Tchicaya blinked at him, incredulous. “It wouldn't be impossible,” Sophus insisted. “When you dump matter on a white dwarf, it undergoes tidal compression heating. If you do it in the right way, a significant amount squirts off in jets. If you arrange for asymmetric jets, and if you have enough mass to play with, you can achieve a modest net acceleration. Then you get the Earth into orbit around the star; the acceleration displaces the orbit, but it can still be bound.”

“But to get Sirius B up to
half the speed of light
—”

Sophus raised a hand. “I know, I know! You'd have to gather so much reaction mass, and move all of it so swiftly into place, the damage would rival Mimosa. To wreak that kind of havoc just to put the whole ball of rock into exile as an unbroken whole would be like saving New York from the floods by blasting it all the way to Io. The only sane response is to work on designing an effective sandbag, while being prepared to give up gracefully and watch the place sink if that proves to be impossible.”

“Yeah.” If Tchicaya remembered the story correctly, though, while New York hadn't quite ended up on Io,
gracefully watching the place sink
would be putting things charitably. Hadn't some famous statue ended up in Paris, and various bridges and buildings gone to scattered theme parks?

Sophus attended briefly to an internal perception. “My colleague is on the brink of emerging. Would you like to meet her?”

“I'd be delighted.” They rose together and headed for the stairs. On the walkway, Tchicaya forced himself to keep pace with Sophus, as if no one would make allowances for his lack of experience now that he'd ceased to be literally the rawest recruit.

“Where's she come from?”

“You mean, directly?”

“Yeah. I was on Pachner, and no one else there was talking about traveling to the
Rindler
. Maybe I just didn't bump into her—”

Sophus shook his head. “She's been in transit almost a century, standard time.”

That was a long journey. Though it cost you more lost years in total to travel by an indirect route, breaking up the trip with as many stops as possible eased the sense of alienation. Whatever faction she supported, she had to be serious about the cause.

Tchicaya pictured a map of the region. “She's come from Chaitin?”

“Right.”

“But she wasn't born there?”

“No. You know, you'll be able to ask her for her life's history directly, in a couple of minutes.”

“Sorry.” Maybe it was absurd to be so curious about the newcomer when he still knew next to nothing about the
Rindler
's other passengers, but Yann's gloomy summary, and his own limited experience, had already made him long for someone who'd shake up the
status quo
.

As they crossed the observation deck, the door to the recovery room opened. Tchicaya smiled in recognition at the newcomer's posture: loose-limbed and confident after the kinesthetic retuning, seizing up for a moment at the sight of the border.

Then he recognized something more, and his own body turned to stone again.

He didn't need to check her signature; she hadn't changed her appearance since their paths had last crossed. In fact, she hadn't changed in four thousand years, since the day they'd first parted.

Tchicaya broke into a run, blind to everything around him, calling out her name.

“Mariama!”

She turned at the sound. He could see that she was shocked, and then uncertain how to respond. He halted, not wanting to embarrass her. It had been twelve hundred years since they'd set eyes on each other, and he had no idea what she'd make of his presence.

Mariama held out her hands, and he ran forward to grip them in his own. They whirled around, laughing, surefooted on the polished floor, leaning back into their own centrifugal force, moving ever faster, until Tchicaya's arms ached and his wrists burned and his vision blurred. But he would not be the one to stop moving, and he would not be the one to let go.

Chapter 6

Something unseen stung Tchicaya's hand, a vibration like a tuning fork held against the bone. He turned and stared at the empty space beside him, and a dark blur shivered into solidity.

“Quickly! Give your Exoself this code.”

No sooner had the data passed between their Mediators than Tchicaya wished he'd rejected it. He felt as if he'd been tricked into catching something incriminatory thrown his way, the reflex action triggered by the object in flight turning out to have been the wrong response entirely.

“I can't!”

Mariama said, “No one will ever know. They're like statues. You'll be invisible.”

Tchicaya's heart pounded. He glanced at the door, and caught himself straining his ears for footsteps, though he knew there'd be nothing to hear. Could she have really walked through the house undetected, marching right past his parents in that scandalous state?

“Our Exoselves scan for danger,” he protested. “If anything happens at ordinary speed—”

“Did your Exoself detect me?”

“I don't know. It might have.”

“Did it signal you? Did it bring you out of Slowdown?”

“No.” He wasn't an adult, though. Who knew how differently theirs were programmed?

“We'll stay clear of them,” Mariama explained. “I'm not doing this to pick their pockets. If we're not a threat to anyone, we won't trigger any alarms.”

Tchicaya stared at her, torn. He had never feared his parents, but he basked in their approval. It only took the faintest shadow of disappointment on his father's face to make him ache with unhappiness. His parents were good people; valuing their high opinion was not just childish narcissism. If he did well in their eyes, he would be respected by everyone. Mariama was only Mariama: a law unto herself.

She inclined her head. “Please, Tchicaya. It's fun doing this, but I'm lonely without you.”

“How long have you been out of Slowdown?”

Mariama averted her eyes. “A week.”

That hurt. How lonely could she be, if it had taken her a week to miss him?

She put a hand over her mouth and mumbled, “Or two.”

Tchicaya reached out to grab her arm, and she danced back and vanished from sight. He froze for a second, then rushed for the door, and stood with his back pressed against it.

He searched the room with his eyes, knowing that it was pointless looking for her if she did not want to be seen. Shadows slid across the walls and floor with hypnotic regularity. Lighting panels in the ceiling came on at night, and softened the changes at dusk and dawn, but even when he looked away from the window the diurnal cycle was obvious, everywhere.

Another week had passed, while he stood there. She could not still be in the room with him; even if she was able to go that long without food and water, she would have gone mad from boredom.

She reappeared in front of him like a trembling reflection in a pan of water, jolted into turbulence but quickly stilled.

“How did you get in?” he demanded.

She pointed a thumb at the window. “The same way I left.”

“You're wearing my clothes!”

Mariama grinned. “They fit me nicely. And I'm teaching them lots of new tricks.” She ran a hand down one sleeve and erased the old pattern, supplanting it with golden starbursts on black.

Tchicaya knew she was goading him, hoping to prod him into giving chase. She'd handed him the key; he didn't need anything more in order to pursue her. If he gave in and joined her now, at least he'd be spared an elaborate game of hide-and-seek.

He said, “Two weeks.” That sounded more than generous, and the risk of his parents noticing his absence would be microscopic.

“We'll see.”

Tchicaya shook his head. “I want you to agree to it. Two weeks, then we both come back.”

Mariama chewed her lower lip. “I'm not going to make a promise I might not be able to keep.” Then she read his face, and relented slightly. “All right!
Barring exceptional circumstances
, we'll come back in two weeks.”

Tchicaya hesitated, but he knew that this was the closest thing to a guarantee he could hope to extract from her.

She held out a hand to him, smiling slightly. Then she silently mouthed the word
Now
.

Their Mediators were smart enough to synchronize the process without needing to be told. Tchicaya sent the code to his Exoself, and the two of them dropped out of Slowdown together. Switching the metabolic modes of cells throughout his body, and reconfiguring all the higher-level systems responsible for maintaining posture, breathing, circulation, and digestion took nearly fifteen minutes. The time passed imperceptibly, though, since his Qusp only resumed its normal rate once his body had completed the shift.

The light in his room had frozen into a late-winter's afternoon. He could hear a breeze moving through the trees beside the house, a different sound entirely to the throb of barometric pressure changes to which he'd grown accustomed. They were only six civil days into the Slowdown, but the new rhythms had seeped into his mind more rapidly than they'd had any right to, as if abetted by some process that his Exoself had neglected to retard.