The Depths of Time (64 page)

“
Greenhouse,
”
he said.
“That’s
where you need to be.
”

“
There he is on visual,
”
said Phelby, pointing unnecessarily at the blinking dot that was moving slowly toward them.

“
I see him, Mr. Phelby,
”
said Captain Marquez. He watched the incoming flashing light grow larger, brighter, evolving into a constantly visible dot that flared brighter every two seconds, to a spacecraft with discernible features, and an acquisition strobe flashing beside the main docking port. Marquez had never much enjoyed being the passive target in a rendezvous and docking operation, and he liked it even less under the present circumstances. They were not in a comfortable sort of neighborhood.

Beyond the approaching tug lay the weird dumbbell shape of the SunSpot Construct. The SunSpot itself was the end of the dumbbell pointed straight at the satellite Greenhouse, while Ballast was at the spaceside end, with the Shadow-Spine forming the link between them. Greenhouse itself loomed behind the Construct, with the massive banded gas giant planet Comfort in turn swallowing half of the sky behind Greenhouse. A strange and disturbing vista of increasingly huge and foreboding shapes floating in the darkness.

As seen from this vantage point, the SunSpot itself was a gleaming silver sphere, five kilometers across, the Shadow-Spine rising up out of its perfect surface. The Spine itself was an arrow-straight shaft twenty kilometers long, with any number of complex extrusions and shapes and radiators and structures sprouting from it in all directions. Ballast sat at the far end of the Spine, a misshapen lump of sky-rock that served no other purpose than to provide sufficient deadweight to move the center of gravity for the whole structure out of the SunSpot and down to the center point of the Spine
’
s length. Massive main trim and aiming thrusters were mounted on the rocky surface of Ballast.

But the SunSpot itself was very clearly the business end of SunSpot Construct. Marquez could tell that much by looking past the SunSpot, down to the surface of Greenhouse. The hemisphere directly under the SunSpot was brilliantly illuminated, and the illumination was very definitely not coming from the local sun.

From this vantage point, safely behind the shield-wall of SunSpot
’
s outer shell, the shell appeared perfectly round. But Marquez knew that was not the case: The face of the shell nearest Greenhouse was sliced away, exposing the interior.

There, inside the truncated sphere that was the outer shell of the SunSpot, an artificial miniature sun shone down on the surface of Greenhouse below. The inner surface of the shell was coated with superreflectant material, and formed into a massive adjustable focusing mirror that directed virtually all the light down onto Greenhouse, rather than letting it radiate wastefully off into space.

The rest of SunSpot Construct was there to control, service, and maintain the SunSpot itself. Shadow-Spine
’
s primary function was to serve as a radiator farm to dump waste heat energy from SunSpot. But one system
’
s wasted heat was another system
’
s free energy source. Only a fraction of a percent of SunSpot
’
s power output went down the Spine, but that was enough to provide a large facility with effectively free and unlimited energy. Shadow-Spine Station had been built so as to take advantage of that power source.

It seemed to Marquez that literally living on the heat-dump spine for the largest artificial fusion reactor ever built was crossing well over the line into insanity, but free energy was one devil of a strong draw.

And part of that free energy went into running a shipyard. And the shipyard had sent out a tug to greet them and fit. the
Dom Pedro IV
with an updated midship docking collar. That way the
DP-IV
could cozy up to Shadow-Spine Station and dock with the station herself. It was not a situation that made Marquez happy.

But at least it would mean he would get his lighter back. The
Cruzeiro do Sul
was already docked at Shadow-Spine, empty and waiting for him. Koffield, Chandray, and their party had already shuttled down to the surface of Greenhouse.

The only practical way of getting the
Cruzeiro do Sul
back was to dock at Shadow-Spine, but Marquez knew he would have probably agreed to dock at Shadow-Spine, despite all his misgivings, even if the
Cruzeiro do Sul
had not been there. A free comprehensive diagnostic exam and refit was every bit as strong a draw as a free power source. When PlanEx Kalzant had made that offer, she had revealed herself as someone who knew what motivated a ship
’
s captain. The offer had been impossible to resist— but, on the other hand, Marquez could not help but wonder what Kalzant
’
s motivation had been. Generosity was all very nice, but what was in it for her?

Or, to put it another way, to what use did Neshobe Kalzant want to put his ship?

The devil with it. He would find out soon enough, and worrying about it would not make that time come any sooner.

“
I
’
ll be in my quarters,
”
Marquez told Phelby.
“
Advise me when the tug has docked.
”

Milos Vandar scribbled furiously on the board behind him, a perfect forest of incomprehensible symbols trailing behind his scriber.
“
And that
third
function can be further reduced
this
way
”
—he struck out half the symbols he had just written—
”
and, as you can see, that establishes equivalence with the sixth condition of formula six over
there”
— he jabbed his scriber toward another writeboard on the opposite wall—
”
which should serve as ample proof of Baskaw
’
s secondary population interference theorem.
”
He set the scriber down on the table in front of him and folded his arms triumphantly.

The room was dead silent for five full seconds as the other scientists worked through the proof, and then the uproar started anew as they shouted their questions, their protests, their agreement, at Vandar.

Anton Koffield watched thoughtfully from a chair on the side of the room. He had been on Greenhouse less than a day, but that day had been decidedly fruitful. Vandar had brought Koffield and Chandray straight from the landing field to the Terraformation Research Center.

The symposium, if one could call it that, consisted of experts Vandar had pulled in from every terraforming discipline. Vandar had simply stood Koffield up by the write-board at one end of a medium-sized lab-lecture room, and told everyone to sit down and listen to what Koffield had to say.

Koffield had long since finished talking and sat down to watch the seed he had planted as it began to grow. It was a scene that would have been familiar to any near-ancient scientist, and even to the natural philosophers and alchemists and theologians of the middle-ancient or far-ancient periods. They would have recognized the heated discussion, the frantic gesticulations, the formulae and diagrams and doodles being scribbled down and erased and rewritten, and understood what it meant: A new idea had gotten loose, a new way of looking at things that turned the old ways upside down and changed everything.

That was not to say a near ancient would have understood everything that was going on. Koffield himself was having a great deal of trouble keeping it all straight. Some of the doodling and figuring was happening on the write-boards that lined all the walls, in much the same way it had been done since the day when the first Sumerian drew a sketch in the dirt with a stick. But the way the doodles and calculations tidied themselves up, proofread and corrected themselves, would have given even a late near ancient pause.

Two or three of the scientists were arguing with their

Artlnts, while others were shouting at their datapages to get a move on and process the new data. Three-dimensional symbol-logic models popped into being in midair here and there, and then vanished again, or mutated and shifted until the boxes and spheres and log charts bore no resemblance to what had been there at the start.

More charts and diagrams and visual simulations were appearing out of nowhere. The images of heads, and whole bodies, of scientists popped into being in the middle of the room, and joined in the fray as their originals projected their images from elsewhere on Greenhouse. Display screens came to life and filled with text or images as other scientists linked in.

Milos Vandar was clearly in his element, but Koffield had no doubt that the other two members of their little traveling group, Ashdin and Sparten, weren
’
t having much luck making sense of it all.

Sparten. Koffield looked over at him, on the opposite side of the room, leaning up against the wall, his arms crossed. It was a pose suitable for a prison guard. No one, his posture said, was going to move without his knowing it.

Sparten worried him. Why was he here? The others he could more or less understand. Obviously Milos Vandar had come to ease the way, to ensure that Koffield got the introduction and the attention he deserved. Wandella Ashdin was a far less logical candidate for the trip, but she had come along anyway. Koffield was willing to guess that Ashdin had talked her way into the group strictly for her own benefit, so that she could pepper him with endless questions about the great man, Oskar DeSilvo. He had done his best to avoid her during the trip, but she had taken every chance she had to learn more about her idol.

But Sparten. Koffield had no doubt that part of Sparten
’
s brief was to keep an eye on one Anton Koffield— but who had ordered Sparten to do so, and why he had been so ordered?

If they—whoever they were—had to choose a watcher, the fact that they had chosen Sparten was informative in and of itself. It suggested that they wanted to keep things
close in, tell as few people as little as possible. Sparten already knew a good deal about Koffield and Chandray and the
Dotn Pedro IV.
Using him saved having to tell someone else—and also got Sparten and his knowledge well away from Solace.

They were
all
well away from Solace. Aside from Neshobe Kalzant, Raenau, Parrige, and his assistant Fribart, and probably a few other government officials, everyone who knew about Baskaw
’
s work had been packed neatly aboard the
Cruzeiro do Sul
and sent well away from Solace. And the government controlled virtually all communications between Greenhouse and Solace.

That right there was probably the core reason for picking Koffield
’
s entourage. Kalzant had said very clearly she needed to control the information until she had time to educate the public. Nor was there necessarily anything sinister about it. But still, Koffield told himself, it would do no harm at all for him to keep his eyes open.

Whatever one wished to call the gathering—conversation, symposium, heated argument, debate, near riot—it was getting more intense almost moment by moment, and more people were joining in by more and different means. Four separate 3-D cams lowered themselves on extensor arms from the ceiling, extended their twin cameras, and did their best to record and transmit the chaotic scene in three dimensions to remote sites, but Koffield couldn
’
t see how any set of cameras, whether operated by humans or Art-Ints, could possibly make sense of the uproar.

And, come to think of it, neither could he. Koffield leaned over to Norla Chandray and smiled at her, feeling at least a whisper of his old sense of humor, lost for too many years, coming back to him.
“
Well,
”
he said to her,
“
I
’
m completely out of my depth. I haven
’
t understood a word in the last half hour. I
’
d say my work here is done. Let
’
s get out of here.
”
He got up out of his chair and slipped out the side door into the hallway.

No one noticed their departure but Yuri Sparten. Sparten was leaning up against the far wall of the room, and made a move as if to follow, but Koffield caught his eye and shook his head no. After a moment
’
s hesitation, Sparten shrugged and slouched back against the wall. After all, they were in a domed settlement on an uninhabitable satellite. How far could they get?

Norla followed Koffield out of the room. She had to hurry a bit to catch up with him, but she got up alongside him before he reached the door to the outside of the building and followed him through as he shoved it open.

“
Ah, sir, we shouldn
’
t just leave like this. You shouldn
’
t.
”

Koffield smiled.
“
Why not?
”

“
Well—because they need you.
”

“
Not anymore, they don
’
t,
”
he said, and was surprised by how pleased that made him feel.
“
I
’
ve done my part. You can go back if you like. I meant
‘
let
’
s get out of here
’
as an invitation, not an order. But I just thought you might care to join me for a stroll.
”