The Abyss Beyond Dreams

  In tandem with Joey’s affliction? she wondered.

  ‘Other than that, there’s not a lot of difference,’ Ayanna said. ‘These are smaller.’

  ‘Narrower,’ Rojas said. ‘And they are rotating very slowly around their long axis. Nine-hour cyclic period.’

  ‘A thermal roll?’ Laura asked.

  ‘Looks like it. That’s the easiest way to keep a stable temperature in space.’

  ‘So something’s making them roll,’ Laura said.

  ‘Nothing visible. It’s not a reaction-control system.’

  ‘Magnetic?’ Joey asked.

  ‘I’m not picking up any significant magnetic field,’ Rojas said. ‘They’re almost inert.’

  ‘What about the anomalous quantum signature?’ Laura asked.

  Ayanna studied several of the displays, a frown growing. ‘It is very strange. The temporal component of spacetime is different in there.’

  ‘Temporal?’ Ibu queried.

  ‘I think time is progressing at a reduced flow rate inside. It’s not unreasonable; our wormholes can manipulate internal time flow in a similar fashion. We can even halt temporal flow altogether inside exotic matter cages if they’re formatted correctly.’

  ‘You mean things happen slower in there?’ Rojas asked.

  ‘Only relative to outside the Forest.’

  ‘So are the trees made out of exotic matter?’ Joey asked.

  ‘I’ve no idea. But negative energy is the only way we know of manipulating spacetime, so there’s got to be something like it in there somewhere.’

  ‘We have to go in and take physical samples,’ Laura said.

  ‘So you keep saying,’ Ayanna replied drily.

  ‘Let’s see if we can, first,’ Rojas said. His hands moved nimbly over various switches on the pilot’s console. Two thirds of the way along the shuttle’s lower fuselage, a malmetal hatch flowed open. Four Mk24 GSDs (General Science Drones) emerged from their silo and began flying towards the Forest, looking like black footballs studded with hexagonal diamonds.

  ‘Functionality is good,’ Rojas said. Each Mk24 was displaying a visual image on a console pane. ‘I’ll send them in one at a time.’

  ‘There isn’t a clear barrier,’ Ayanna said. ‘The effect simply increases as you approach the outermost layer of trees.’

  ‘You mean I’ll get an increasingly delayed telemetry response?’

  ‘Could be,’ Ayanna replied. Uncertainty tainted her thoughts.

  ‘The first should reach the trees in forty minutes,’ Rojas said.

  Laura kept looking at the view through the windscreen; she found it easier than constantly reinterpreting the images from the Mk24s. They weren’t getting much more than the full-spectrum visual feed. Hard science data was sparse. The solar wind was normal, as was the cosmic radiation environment.

  ‘I wonder if this is what schizophrenia feels like,’ Ibu said after twenty minutes. ‘I wanted a new and exciting life; that’s why I joined the colony project.’

  ‘But not this exciting,’ Laura suggested.

  ‘No fucking way. But I have to admit, the Void is intriguing. From a purely academic point of view, you understand.’

  ‘I’ll take that over boredom.’

  The big man cocked his head to look at her with interest. ‘You were going to another galaxy because you were bored?’

  ‘I’ve had six marriage partnerships, and a lot more fun partners. I’ve had twelve children, not all of them in a tank; I’ve actually been pregnant twice, which wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. I’ve lived on the External and Inner worlds and sampled every lifestyle that wasn’t patently stupid. I thought becoming a scientist on the cutting edge of research would be infinitely thrilling. It wasn’t. Damn, unless you’re in it, you have no idea of how much petty politics there is in academia. So it was either a real fresh start, or download myself into ANA and join all the incorporeal minds bickering eternity away. And I just didn’t believe that was a decent solution.’

  ‘Interesting. What faction would you have joined?’

  ‘Brandts traditionally join the moderate Advancers. That sounded more of the same. So here I am.’

  Ibu gestured at the vast silver stipple beyond the windscreen. ‘And is this not the infinite thrill you were searching for? You must be very content at what fate has dealt us.’

  ‘Hmm. More like infinitely worrying.’

  ‘Maybe, but we are in the middle of the galaxy’s greatest enigma. Unless we solve it, we will never return to the real universe. You can’t beat that for motivation.’

  ‘The more I see and understand,’ Laura said, ‘the more it seems to me we’re lab rats running around a particularly bizarre maze. What kind of power has the ability to pull us in here, then apparently ignore us?’

  ‘You think we’re being watched?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suspect this place isn’t quite as passive as the captain believes. What would be the point of it doing nothing?’

  ‘What’s the point of it at all?’

  She shrugged, which didn’t work well in freefall.

  ‘Vermillion has decelerated into low orbit,’ Rojas announced. ‘They’re launching environment analysis probes into the planet’s atmosphere.’

  ‘It’s an oxygen nitrogen atmosphere,’ Ayanna said disparagingly. ‘And spectography showed the kind of photosynthetic vegetation we’ve found everywhere we’ve been in the galaxy. Unless there are some hellish pathogens running round loose down there, Cornelius will give the order to land.’

  ‘He doooesn’t,’ Joey began. The erratic spasms afflicting his face and neck mangled the words, so everyone had to listen hard now whenever he spoke. ‘Ever ned t-t-to lanid.’

  ‘How’s that?’ Laura asked.

  ‘Because of the Skathl . . .’ A burst of anguish flowered in Joey’s mind as his traitor muscles distorted his words beyond recognition. ‘Thusss Skahh.’ He shut his mouth forcefully. Began again. ‘Moih woold . . .’ His head bowed in defeat. ‘Because of the Skylords,’ his telepathic voice said clearly. ‘They brought us here for whatever this ridiculous fulfilment kick of theirs is. If they wanted to kill us, the very least they had to do was just leave us drifting in space while all our systems glitched and crashed. But they found us and guided us here, specifically here to this star which has an H-congruous type planet. On top of that, this whole place is artificial. Like Laura said, we’re here for a reason. Death isn’t it.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Laura said. ‘On the plus side, it probably means the Vermillion and the others will be able to land intact.’

  Ibu grunted in agreement. ‘And probably won’t be able to fly again.’

  ‘Fulfilment,’ Rojas said, as if hearing the word for the first time. ‘You’re making it sound like a sacrifice to a god.’

  ‘Best theory yet,’ Ayanna said. ‘The Void is the most powerful entity we’ve yet encountered. God’s not a bad description.’

  ‘Now you’re into infinite regression,’ Ibu said cheerfully. ‘If this is a god, what does that say of whoever created it?’

  ‘I’m not sure this qualifies as an entity,’ Laura said. ‘I’m sticking with my theory that the Void’s a more advanced version of ANA. Just a big-ass computer, running a real-life simulation that we’re trapped in.’

  ‘Nothing so far disproves that,’ Ayanna said sympathetically. ‘But that still means there’s a reason for it existing, and there’ll be a controlling sentience.’

  ‘My vote’s for a work of art,’ Joey told them. ‘If you can create this, you’re a long, long way past us on the evolutionary scale. Why not do it for fun?’

  ‘Because it’s dangerous and going to kill the galaxy,’ Rojas said.

  ‘If you’re a god, that might be fun.’

  ‘Let’s hope we don’t meet Her then,’ Ibu said sardonically.

  Laura looked at the Forest again. ‘Well, I don’t think she’s likely to be in there.’

  ‘We might not get to find out,’ Rojas s
aid. ‘The first Mk24’s telemetry feed is going weird on us.’

  ‘Weird, how?’ Ibu asked.

  Rojas was studying several displays. ‘The datastream is slowing down. I don’t mean there’s less information; it’s dopplering – the bit rate separation is increasing.’

  ‘Temporal flow reduction,’ Ayanna said in satisfaction. ‘The quantum sensor data was right.’

  ‘Where’s the drone?’ Laura asked.

  ‘A hundred and fifty kilometres from the nearest distortion tree,’ Rojas said. ‘Approach rate, one kilometre a second. I’m reducing that now; I need more time to initiate manoeuvres.’

  ‘How’s it responding?’ Joey asked. There was a lot of curiosity behind the question.

  ‘Sluggish,’ Rojas admitted. ‘Oh: interesting. The second Mk24’s data is speeding up.’

  ‘The effect is fluctuating?’ Ayanna asked. ‘Now that is odd.’

  ‘Okay, and now the second Mk24’s telemetry is dopplering back down,’ Rojas said.

  ‘Maybe it’s a variable threshold,’ Laura suggested. The lack of instant information was exasperating; this mission was like operating in the Stone Age. Once again, she instinctively asked her u-shadow to connect to the shuttle’s network. Startlingly, the interface worked. A whole flock of icons popped up in her exovision. Secondary thought routines operating in her macrocellular clusters began to tabulate an analysis on an autonomic level. The raw torrent of information suddenly shifted to being precise and edifying.

  Joey and Ayanna immediately turned to look at her, and she realized she’d let out a mental flash of comfort. ‘What’s the antonym of glitch?’ she asked. ‘I’ve just got a full-up connection to Fourteen’s network.’

  ‘Resurrection?’ Ibu suggested.

  Small icons in Laura’s exovision told her the rest of the team were taking advantage of the shuttle’s return to normality as the glitches faded. But she was concentrating primarily on the quantum environment which the first Mk24 was gliding through. The temporal components were certainly different. There were other abnormalities as well.

  ‘Do you understand this?’ she asked Ayanna.

  ‘Not really.’

  Laura closed her eyes as the Mk24 passed within seventeen kilometres of a distortion tree on the fringe of the Forest. The image it relayed of the tree was excellent. Its long bulbous structure was made up from the wrinkled folds of some crystalline substance; they were arranged in a much less convoluted fashion than a Skylord. Pale multicoloured shadows rippled vigorously inside, as if there was something deeper within the tree that was prowling about. The image flickered.

  The Mk24’s datastream was dopplering down fast. Even with buffering, it was degrading badly. Laura shifted her focus to the second Mk24, which was five minutes behind it, approaching the outer tier of trees. The image was much better.

  With that front and centre in her consciousness, she ran a review through the rest of the data construct that Shuttle Fourteen was assembling.

  ‘Are you catching this?’ she asked abruptly. Secondary routines pulled another datastream into principal interpretation. It wasn’t from the Mk24 drones. The shuttle’s main radar was showing a kilometre-wide circular formation of small objects. They were already seventeen thousand kilometres away from the blunt apex of the Forest, and receding at one point eight kilometres a second. Each object was globular and measured about three metres in diameter. Visual imaging was showing nothing; their surfaces were dull. She flicked the shuttle’s thermal imaging to tracking them, which registered an interestingly high infra-red emission.

  ‘Thirty-five degrees?’ Ibu muttered in surprise. ‘What are they?’

  ‘Whatever they are, radar shows eleven of them,’ Laura said. ‘They’re holding that circular formation, too, with minimal separation drift. Zero acceleration. Something flung them out like that.’

  ‘Heading straight for the planet,’ Rojas said. His mind flared a peak of alarm. ‘I’m calling Vermillion, warning them something’s approaching.’

  ‘Baby Skylords?’ Joey asked. ‘This is the parturition zone, after all.’

  ‘Reasonable guess,’ Ibu said. ‘I wonder what their lifecycle is. Grow up on the planet then jump back to space when they’re mature?’

  ‘They’re inert,’ Laura told them. ‘No gravitational or spacetime distortion registering at all. They’re not Skylords.’

  ‘Skylord eggs?’ Ayanna said.

  ‘The Skylords said they didn’t come from here,’ Ibu said. ‘They’re not exactly clear speakers, but I don’t think they could even grasp the concept of lying.’

  ‘Vermillion will send a shuttle out to rendezvous,’ Rojas said. ‘If they can afford to.’

  ‘We can always study them in situ if not,’ Joey said. ‘This is where they came from, after all.’

  The third Mk24 flew past the outer layer of trees and lost contact less than a minute later. The fourth lasted for seventy-two seconds before the datastream dopplered down to zero.

  ‘Just so we’re straight,’ Rojas said. ‘Slow time isn’t fatal, right, Ayanna?’

  ‘It’s only slow inside the Forest relative to the Void continuum outside,’ she replied with growing annoyance.

  ‘So now we just need to know if that quantum signature affects living tissue,’ Ibu said.

  ‘Okay,’ Rojas said. ‘I’ll launch a Laika drone.’

  Laura knew that, on an intellectual level, she ought to be having some kind of conflicted sentiment, maybe with a small sense of moral disapproval thrown in. But, frankly, after so many centuries of witnessing genuine death (as opposed to bodyloss) in both animals and humans, it didn’t bother her any more. Besides, it was hard to work up much sentiment about a gerbil.

  The little rodent was nestled in the centre of the Laika drone, which had almost identical sensors to the Mk24, with the addition of a tiny life-support globe at its core. They all observed through the sensor datastream as the Laika drone glided past the outer distortion trees. Through its waning telemetry link, they saw the gerbil twitching its nose, heart rate unchanged, breathing regularly, trying to suck water from the nozzle by its head. Muscles and nerves were all performing normally. The link dwindled to nothing.

  ‘The Forest interior doesn’t kill you,’ Ibu said. ‘Doesn’t even affect life.’

  Joey grunted – a nasty twisted sound more like a hoot. ‘Not for the first minute.’

  ‘The data has dopplered down beyond detection because of the temporal environment,’ Ayanna said. ‘We lost it, that’s all. The Laika didn’t fail. That gerbil is still alive in there.’

  ‘That’s your official recommendation?’ Rojas asked.

  ‘Yes. I believe it’s safe for us to go inside. The only thing I don’t know is the rate which time progresses in there. If we’re inside for a day, it may be a month that passes outside. It may be more. It may be less.’

  ‘Thank you. Joey?’

  ‘We’ve come this far.’

  ‘Laura?’

  ‘I need to have samples of those trees. Whatever mechanism they’re using is way outside anything we’ve encountered before. And I desperately want to know what their energy source is. You don’t change temporal flow without a phenomenal amount of power. That’s got to come from somewhere, and we’re not seeing the neutrino activity to indicate direct mass energy conversion, or even fusion. It can’t be solar. So, where . . . ?’

  ‘Where does the energy come from for our telekinesis?’ Ibu asked immediately. ‘I don’t think you’re using the right references here, Laura. The Void continuum is different.’

  ‘You mean the trees are thinking time to be slow?’

  ‘Thinking. Wishing. Who knows?’

  ‘All right, settle down,’ Rojas said. He stared at Ibu. ‘I take it you’re happy to go inside?’

  ‘Not happy, but I don’t object. Laura’s right: we need to get a good look at whatever processes are going on in those trees.’

  Rojas exhaled loudly. ‘All right, then, I’ll
tell the Vermillion we’re going inside. I’m assuming once we’re in there, we’ll lose our link with them. I don’t want them to launch a rescue mission just because we can’t talk for a few days.’

  Ibu opened a private link to Laura’s u-shadow. ‘Why do I get the notion a rescue mission isn’t going to be featuring heavily on the captain’s agenda?’

  *

  Rojas kept the manual controls active as he piloted Shuttle Fourteen forwards, heading for a large gap between distortion trees. Laura preferred to watch the approach through the windscreen rather than access the shuttle’s sensor suite. However, her exovision display did provide a secondary interpretation, detailing their exact progress.

  Acceleration was a tenth of a gee, enough to keep them in their couches. Laura used the time to quickly munch down some chocolate wafers. Even the small amount of gravity allowed her stomach to digest food without complaining.

  ‘Somehow I feel we should be making preparations,’ Ibu said.

  ‘What kind?’ Laura asked.

  ‘I’m not sure. Putting on some kind of protective suit? Carrying a personal oxygen tank? Inoculation?’

  ‘I’ve got a force-field skeleton web on under my shipsuit,’ Ayanna said. ‘Does that count?’

  ‘That only helps if it doesn’t glitch.’

  ‘I thought you were the optimist.’

  Laura rapped a knuckle on the cabin’s padded bulkhead. The beige cushioning was arranged in squares; nearly half of them were the doors to small lockers. ‘There are emergency pressure suits stowed in every cabin. You’ll be fine.’ She broke the seal on a carton of orange juice and started sucking at the straw.

  Ibu glanced at the wall of trees that stretched across Voidspace outside the shuttle’s windscreen. ‘You called us rats in a lab maze. More like bacteria under a microscope. Our feelings are irrelevant. The only thing that’s going to keep us alive in here is competence and logic.’ He smiled round the cabin. ‘Thankfully we’ve got both. Can you imagine what this mission would be like if we only had a bunch of fifty-year-olds for company? A rollercoaster of panic and tears the whole way.’