The eternity artifact, p.38
The Eternity Artifact, page 38
Her head turned. “Chendor?” Her eyes went beyond me. “I told you not to tell anyone.”
“Medical discretion, Dr. Taube.” DeLisle smiled, almost boyishly.
“If you were not a D.S.S, doctor, I’d report you.” Her voice was thin, wheezy, and slightly rasping.
“But I am.” He inclined his head. “I’ll be back later.” The door closed behind him.
Elysen snorted, but the sound was a soft wheeze.
“I thought you might like to see the final version.” I stepped forward and turned the canvas so that the light fell on it.
“You… do have a great gift, Chendor… shouldn’t have wasted it on me.”
“It wasn’t wasted. You made a great discovery, and there ought to be a real portrait of you.”
“Looking too old to have done anything.”
I wasn’t about to get into that. “You’re not in pain?”
“No. There’s no pain, except feeling the universe close in around me. It’s hard to think for long at a time, and soon, I won’t be able to at all.”
“You’ll be fine,” I lied. “You’re just tired.”
“I’m more… than tired… but there’s nothing to be done.”
I propped the portrait against the bulkhead where she could see it, then settled onto the stool beside the bunk.
Her eyes closed, and I just sat there for a time.
She coughed and opened her eyes. “You asked what we had discovered, Chendor. It’s very simple. The Danannian aliens used their technology to move their entire galaxy—a small one, as galaxies go—into a new universe that they created.”
Was Elysen getting delusional? She’d already told me that.
“I am not losing it.” Her voice became gently acerbic. “I am not imagining things. That was what your device or model was all about. It was a representation of what they did… or, at the time it was made, a representation of what they were trying… Cleon doesn’t think that part of their science will work now… don’t understand the physics… something about the understructure of the universe… when dark energy and matter… atrousans and gravitons… once the density of the universe drops below a certain value… there’s an attenuation effect…” Her voice dropped off.
“You told me some of that. You and Cleon made it very clear. Just rest.”
“I suppose… I did. It’s hard to remember… I can recall when everything was so clear…”
I reached out and patted her shoulder. “We all have times like that.”
“Don’t humor me, Chendor.”
“I’m not. I’ve forgotten and told Aeryana and Nicole things I’ve said twice before. They look at me as if I were crazy.”
“Artists can… repeat themselves… Scientists… should not.” Her eyes closed once more. “Very… unprofessional…”
She seemed to doze, or sleep, and a half smile crossed her lips. I could see that she once had to have been a stunningly beautiful woman.
After a time, a good half stan, if not longer, she bolted up halfway, and her eyes darted to the portrait. “Who’s… that old woman?” She sank back onto the pillows. Her eyes remained on the canvas, searching to identify who the woman was.
“Someone I know. She’s a good person.” What else could I say?
“Oh…” Her eyes cleared. “I feel… so stupid… Please go… Chendor.”
I patted the back of her hand. “Would you like anything?”
“You’re… humoring… me.”
“A little. We all need humoring sometimes. Can I get you something to drink?”
“No… there’s nothing… I need.”
I thought she’d drifted off again, but her fingers, those fingers that had been so active, grasped my wrist. “Chendor… please go… now.”
“No. I’m staying. You don’t have to talk, and I won’t.” I leaned forward and took her hand. It was cool, not cold.
“Give the rest of the tea… Liam Fitzhugh… He’ll appreciate it… especially… bergamot. He… has… high standards.”
“I will,” I promised.
After a time, she closed her eyes once more.
Before long, her hand was cold. I still sat there for a long time, until after the medtech came.
77 CHANG
Much as I wanted to, some ways, Liam and I didn’t make love… not beyond holding each other. Didn’t want sex out of relief, just because I’d survived. He just held me for a long time. Held him, too.
We both knew we wanted more. Still not sure how to get there. Could be we were both afraid that sex would be a disappointment.
We slept some, but D.S.S. bunks are too frigging narrow.
When we got up, I did have to explain to Liam what Morgan had done. Whatever the Danannians had left behind distinguished between hostile and nonhostile by use of weapons. Bet that when the Norfolk had fired a torp at the surface, that triggered the defenses. Morgan had made sure that the Covenanters would fire weapons. Don’t think even he’d realized the extent of the defenses. Wasn’t sure anyone would have.
We’d lost the Alwyn. Covenanters had lost a fleet, something like fifteen ships, and the CWs had lost a flotilla of five ships. Bet the Comity and D.S.S. would be happy with that. Wondered if anyone really cared about the technology or the artifact.
Anyway, Liam and I washed up—separately—and went to the evening meal in the mess. We sat with Lerrys and Lindskold. Chendor Barna joined us. He looked worse than I’d felt when I’d gotten out of the needle.
Liam saw it too, asked, “Chendor… is there anything we might help with?”
“No…”
“Anything at all?” I added.
He gave a sad smile. “Elysen… Dr. Taube… she died this afternoon.”
“Died? How did that happen?” asked Lindskold. “Not because of the ship…?”
“No. She was old… too old for anything to hold her together, but she’d wanted to come on the expedition. She was working on something. It was a big discovery. I imagine Dr. Lazar will announce it before too long.” He paused, then looked at Liam. “Oh… she brought tea, an enormous amount. She said to give it to you.”
“To me? I cannot imagine why…”
“She had her reasons. She always did.”
“I’m sorry, Chendor,” I added. He needed consoling, not questions. “She seemed… special.”
“I think we would have been friends for a long time. It’s hard to lose friends. There aren’t that many.”
Reached out under the table and took Liam’s hand. He squeezed back, and smiled at me.
“No, there aren’t,” Lindskold agreed. “We’ve all lost someone today.”
Swallowed as I thought of Tuala. He’d gone out, enthusiastic. Hadn’t come back. The Magellan had lost five needle pilots and Braun. That didn’t count the Alwyn. Still wasn’t certain what we’d gotten from it. One artifact and a bunch of samples, and probably lots of images.
“A battle in the middle of nowhere.” Lindskold looked to Liam. “Are we all that desperate?”
Desperate? Wouldn’t have called going out and picking fights desperate, not the way the Sunnis, the CWs, and the Covenanters had. Stupid, maybe greedy. But desperate?
“That is a definite and distinct possibility,” Liam began, clearing his throat in his professorial manner.
Almost broke into a grin, but wanted to hear what he had to say.
“There have been no new or significant substantive advances in technology or the underlying sciences in close to a millennium, even longer than that so far as the basics of understanding the universe might be considered. For the fundamentalist cultures, those of the theistic believers, particularly those such as the Sunnis and the Covenanters, this scientific status quo has been not only acceptable, but desirable, insomuch as it has reinforced both established religious doctrine, theocratic practices, and the subconscious belief that the scope of knowledge available to and understandable by human beings is limited and finite…”
I had to admit I hadn’t thought of that.
“… and that greater knowledge is the providence of the deity, whoever and whatever that deity might be. Even the possibility that greater knowledge is potentially available disrupts cultural, political, and social norms— as it has in the past throughout history. The theistic cultures must either obtain or stifle such knowledge. If they obtain it, then it was vouchsafed to them by the deity, and if it is suppressed, it is as though it had never existed, and life and culture will continue as before. For the nontheistic cultures, knowledge is the basis of power, and the ‘rightness’ of their cultures is proven by success and survival, which is, in turn, determined by comparative advantage over other cultures, and that advantage is, of course, provided by the first and most successful application of new knowledge. Thus, the culture that can obtain and apply such knowledge first attains an advantage over all others. The Comity was and remains in a position to do so, and since it is already first among equals, so to speak, additional advanced knowledge and technology would place the leaders of other polities in a position of extreme desperation, as suggested by Lieutenant Lindskold.” Liam nodded to her, took a sip of water.
“Then, things will get worse, not better,” I pointed out.
“Most probably.”
“You’re so cheerful, Liam,” Chendor said.
“I am sorry, especially at the moment, but I do fear that great instability awaits us.”
Things were depressing enough, without that.
“Did you get any good paintings from Danann?” Lerrys asked Chendor.
“Good? Only time will tell that. I do have quite a number…” He looked almost embarrassed to speak about his paintings.
“Tell us, if you would,” I pressed.
“I just painted what I saw. I had to enhance the light, of course…”
All of us were happier letting Chendor talk about painting. Even Liam.
78 GOODMAN/BOND
Once the blackness hit me, I hadn’t thought, or felt anything.
Fuzzy gray—that was the only way to describe it— replaced the blackness. It swirled over and around me for ages.
I woke up in a medcrib. It wasn’t a CIS crib, either, and I was restrained. I was surprised that I was awake and could still think. I felt feverish and weak.
“He’s coming around.” I didn’t recognize the voice.
“Good afternoon, Tech Bond, or Goodman, or whatever your real name is.” The man who spoke wore a commander’s uniform. His hair was iron gray, and his eyes were bloodshot. He didn’t sound happy.
The other figure, barely visible behind his shoulder, was a major.
“When is it?” I figured that was a safe question. Better to ask questions than have them ask the ones that would trigger the nanites in my system. It was a fool’s game, because I was playing for time I didn’t have. Sooner or later they would get to the questions, and I’d be dead in all the ways that counted. But I had to try.
“Not quite a week after we caught you.”
“What happened?”
The commander laughed. I didn’t like the sound of it. “By the way, I’m Commander Morgan.”
I should have recognized him. Why hadn’t I?
“You’re damned lucky that Chief Stuval was so careful. At least, I think you’re fortunate,” Morgan said. “You don’t fit the profile of a suicider.”
Suicider?
“That device you were assembling was a very small— but very powerful—AG capped-drive vortex bomb.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. I’d been building an AG signaler. Hadn’t I? That was what I’d been trained to do.
“I’m sure that your controller didn’t tell you that. If there had even been the slightest grav shift after you connected the power source, there wouldn’t have been more than a few coupled molecules within several thousand kays—and that would have included you. You should have wondered why you were placed in an armory, and why it was so easy to get the equipment you need…”
What could I say? If I revealed what my assignment had theoretically been, I was dead, and if the commander asked any leading questions along those lines, I was dead.
“Oh… those SAD nanites they dumped in your system are gone—at least most of them. That’s why you’ve been under so long. Major DeLisle figured that most of them had to be in the brain and bloodstream, and he’s been flushing your system for days. You’re feverish because formulated blood isn’t a perfect match, and we don’t have the equipment for that. We do have enough to read whether you’re telling the truth and understand a great deal of what you won’t say.” He laughed again, harshly. “And you’ve probably lost sections of your memory, and you’ll lose a bit more, but not enough that you won’t remain you. I wouldn’t want you to get the benefit of a quick death or a personality death through nanite amnesia. After what you planned, you don’t deserve quick oblivion.”
I had a feeling that, bad as matters had been, they were about to get worse, and I couldn’t even move.
“What was the device you were building? Or what were you told it was?”
There wasn’t much point in answering. If Morgan was lying, I was dead. If he was telling the truth, I was also dead—just a little later. Still… “Where are we? What was the thing the scientists brought back up from Danann?” Better to ask questions than to answer them, one way or another.
“We’re on our way back to Hamilton system, and neither the captain nor I is very happy that we ran into a Covenanter fleet or that you were planted to blow us into cosmic dust. If I were a sadist and didn’t have to account for equipment, I’d put you in a needle with all your little pieces and let you either suffocate or assemble your device and turn yourself into dust and energy.”
“But what happened?”
“We stunned you before you could put the pieces together. Both the Covenanter fleet and the CW flotilla are scattered debris, and Danann is probably off-limits to human exploration for a millennium or so.”
I had to keep the interview away from more questions. I had to. “You said I was putting together some sort of bomb. That wasn’t my assignment at all.” I had to risk one sentence. “I was supposed to build a signaler.”
Morgan’s gray face froze. “That may have been what they told you, whatever your real name is, but the device you almost assembled was effectively an old-style vortex torp warhead. They were abandoned centuries ago because they were so unstable.”
A coldness settled over me. I’d been set up. Because I was pragmatic, because I was practical, I didn’t fit the suicider profile—and the colonel had been counting on that. What else could I say?
“You know what really tripped you up, Goodman, or whatever your name is?”
I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t any point in saying anything. If I did, the nanetics would turn my memory to mush. Or they might. Even if they didn’t, the Comity would execute me if I admitted anything.
Morgan shook his head, looked down at me. “You tried to be an armorer. You were too damned good. According to Chief Stuval, when you came aboard, you were a typical borderline tech second. You learned more in two months than most techs learn in three tours. When he found out you fixed that power converter…”
I’d hidden it. How had Stuval known?
“You don’t think a chief knows every hiding place in his spaces? He checked it out and put it back. That was when he let me know.”
One way or another, I was dead.
“You’ll be under restraint for a few more days yet, until we decide. I wouldn’t want you to escape seeing what happened as a result of your actions—and those of Colonel Truesdale.”
I tried not to swallow. The commander had known of Truesdale, and his connections?
“You’re going to have to pay, especially for this assignment,” Morgan added, “since I doubt we know of all the others for which you won’t pay.”
He turned to the major standing behind him. “Put him back under.”
As the grayness rose around me, so did the questions. Why had I been set up? What had really happened? What had the artifact been? Had there ever been a Morning Star or Spear of Iblis… ?
79 FITZHUGH
We’d made two successful Gate translations of the three necessary to return us to Hamilton system, and the wall screen in my work space now showed stars—those scattered at the edge of the Galaxy, but individual stars discernible to the unaided eye—and not just distant clouds of light or points of light that represented entire galaxies.
More than a day at high-sublight travel remained before we reached the final Gate on our return. With attacks by three different polities in slightly less than four objective months, I retained certain doubts that the remainder of our return would be as uneventful as intimated by either the captain or by Commander Morgan, although we had encountered no additional obstacles after the first two return translations.
Jiendra and I had eaten together when she had not been occupied with the various duties that devolved upon junior officers, particularly when casualties had abbreviated the duty rolls, and those few stans we had spent together had been the most enjoyable in years, so much so that, for that reason alone, I was not anticipating with relief the conclusion of the expedition and mission. After what I had heard from Command Morgan and from what Jiendra had appended in private, accurate postulation of any return to Danann within the temporal limbi of current human civilizations appeared improbable, and that was the most generous assessment foremost in my personal analyses of the situation.
I’d also been considering Chendor’s artifact, and the limited information surrounding it. My foremost thesis was that it was a model, perhaps even one designed to replicate on a smaller scale, a massive stellar engineering project. The two silver-gray spheres had to represent Chronos and Danann—
The rap on the door to my work space was firm, but not percussively excessive. It couldn’t have been Jiendra, since she was on duty as a junior operations officer, another result of the attrition of the officers of the Magellan.
