Eon

  “It has a range of about ten centimeters,” she commented. “Strictly local.”

  Rimskaya came up behind them and cleared his throat.

  “Miss Vasquez,” he said.

  “Yes, sir?” Old habits die hard.

  ”How do you like the problem?”

  “It’s marvelous,” she said, her tone level. ”It will take time to solve—if it can be solved.”

  “Certainly,” Rimskaya said. ”I trust you have become aware of our hypotheses?”

  “Yes. They’ve been helpful.” They had been, too. She didn’t want to overstress the point, however.

  “Good. You’ve been to the singularity?”

  She nodded. ”I wish I’d had the multi-meter.” She passed it to him and he examined the device, shaking his head.

  “A fine idea. I see you are making progress. Much better than I. That is as it should be. There is a gentleman on the expedition who might be able to help you more. His name is Takahashi, the expedition’s second-in-command. A very experienced theorist. I trust you’ve read some of our joint papers.”

  “Yes. Very interesting?”

  Rimskaya fixed his stern gaze on her for an uncomfortably long five or ten seconds, then nodded. ”I must speak with Farley now,” he said, walking away.

  The expedition trucks parked twenty meters from the camp.

  Lanier walked out to meet them. Carrolson stayed with Patricia.

  “That’s as far as we’ve gone down the corridor,” she said. ”From what they radioed back, we still haven’t found much.”

  The arrival was something of an anticlimax. Nobody left the vehicles; and one by one, at Lanier’s instructions, they moved past the camp and up the ramp into the tunnel, vanishing into the sixth chamber.

  Lanier returned with three memory blocks. He gave one to Carrolson and one to Patricia, pocketing the third. ”Expedition report, unedited,’ he said. ”Nothing spectacular, according to Takahashi, except ...”

  He glanced behind him, down the corridor.

  “Yes?” Carrolson urged.

  “The second circuit is more than just floating cupolas. There are openings beneath the cupolas. They appear to be wells of some sort. They didn’t find out where the wells lead, but they’re definitely open.”

  “Then the corridor has holes,” Carrolson said. ”All right, Patricia, it’s time we made plans for a trip to the first circuit. When are you going to be free?”

  Patricia took a small breath and shook her head. ”Any time. I can work wherever I am.”

  “Make it day after tomorrow,” Lanier said. ”Patricia and I have to spend some time in the library.” He discreetly gestured to Carrolson: time to leave. She made her excuses and glanced back at them as she entered the tent.

  “Part two of the indoctrination will begin next shift,” he said. “The most difficult part of all. Are you ready for it?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, feeling her chest contract. ”I must be. I’ve survived so far.”

  “Good. Meet me at the ramp in twelve hours.”

  Chapter Nine

  The Axis City had moved a million kilometers down the corridor since its construction five centuries ago. Olmy and the Frant had covered that distance in less than a week, flying their craft in a smooth stretched spiral around the plasma tube.

  In the history of the Thistledown and the Way, no one had ever entered the asteroid from the outside.

  Olmy and the Frant had surveyed the Thistledown’s new occupants for two weeks and had learned a great deal. They were indeed human, and not even Korzenowski himself could have expected what Olmy now knew.

  The Thistledown had come full circle. Geshels had warned there might be displacement, but no one had suspected what kind of displacement, or what the results might be.

  Having completed his principal duties for the Nexus, Olmy then turned off his data and mission recorders and returned to his old home in the third chamber. The cylindrical apartment building where his triad family had lived, where he had spent two years of his childhood, stood right at the edge of Thistledown City, not quite a kilometer from the northern cap.

  Once, the building had held twenty thousand people, chiefly Geshels, technicians and researchers employed on the Sixth Chamber Project. It had then served as temporary home for hundreds of orthodox Naderites expelled by the Nexus from Alexandria. Now, of course, it was empty; there was no evidence it had even been visited by the asteroid’s new occupants.

  Olmy walked across the lobby and stood near the credit counter, one eyebrow lowered as if in puzzlement. He turned to the broad illusart window and spotted the Frant in the courtyard, sitting patiently on an empty light-sculpture pedestal.

  The window made it appear that the Frant was in a luxurious Earth garden, complete with glowing sunset. The Frant would appreciate that, Olmy thought.

  He picted graphicspeak at the credit counter and received a confidential response: the apartment was blocked, as were all apartments in the building. None could be occupied or even viewed until the present interdict was revoked.

  Those orders had been issued after the last of the Naderite families had been transferred from the cities. Only public buildings had been left open for the use of the last scholars, finishing their exodus studies. The Earth people had already put some of those facilities to use, the Thistledown City Library chief among them.

  He picted a Nexus coded icon into the credit counter and said aloud, “I have authorization to temporarily revoke interdict.”

  “Authorization recognized,” the counter replied.

  “Open and decorate unit three seven nine seven five.”

  “What decor do you wish?”

  “As it was when occupied by the Olmy-Secor-Lear Triad family.”

  “You are of that family?” the counter asked politely. “Searching. Decoration completed. You may ascend.”

  Olmy took the lift. In the round cloud-gray hallway, walking a few inches above the floor, he felt a most unfamiliar and unpleasant emotional tug—the long-past pain of dreams forgotten or lost, of youthful hopes destroyed by political necessity.

  He had lived so long his memories seemed to contain the thoughts and emotions of many different people. But one set of emotions still transcended the others, and one ambition remained foremost. He had worked for centuries on behalf of the ruling Geshels and Naderites, never playing favorites, that someday he might be allowed this opportunity.

  His apartment number glowed red at the base of the circular door, the only glowing number in the hallway. He entered and stood for a moment in the surroundings of his childhood, engaged in a brief moment of nostalgia. The furnishings and decor were all here, reflecting his natural father’s attempt to duplicate the apartment they had been driven from in Alexandria. They had spent two years here, awaiting decisions on their case before their triad family could be moved to the newly finished Axis City.

  They had been the last family to live in these buildings, and Olmy had had considerable opportunity to explore the coop memory and experiment with programming. Even in his childhood, he had shown a proclivity for things technical that dismayed his orthodox Naderite parents. And what he had discovered in the building’s memory five centuries ago, quite by accident, had changed the direction of his life ...

  He sat in his father’s sky-blue chair before the apartment data pillar.

  Such pillars were now obsolete in the Axis City, used only as charming antiques, but he had spent hundreds of hours as a child in front of this very device and found it familiar and comfortable to work with.

  Picting his own coded icons, he activated the pillar and opened a custom channel to the building’s memory. Once, the memory had served the needs of thousands of tenants, keeping their records and acting as a depository for millions of possible decor variations. Now it was virtually blank; Olmy had the impression of swimming in a vast dark hollowness.

  He picted a stack and register number and waited for coded questions to be picted. As
each appeared before him, he answered precisely and correctly.

  In the hollowness, there appeared a presence, fragmented, grievously incomplete, but powerful and recognizable even so.

  “Set Engineer,” Olmy said aloud.

  My friend. The nonvocal communication was level and strong, if toneless. Even incomplete, Konrad Korzenowski’s personality and presence were commanding.

  “We’ve come home.”

  Yes? How long since you last spoke to me?

  “Five hundred years.”

  I am still dead ...

  “Yes,” Olmy said softly. ”Now listen. There is much you must know. We’ve come home, but we are not alone. The Thistledown has been reoccupied. It is time for you to come with me now ...

  Chapter Ten

  Patricia and Lanier passed through the fence and security checks, entered the second chamber library and followed the strips of lights across the empty floor and up the stairs. On the fourth floor, they entered the reading area with its dark cubicles.

  Lanier sat her down in the lighted cubicle and went off into the stacks, leaving her alone to again feel the chill, the spookiness that seemed—even amid all the strangeness—reserved for the library alone.

  When he returned, he held four thick books in his arms.

  “These are among the last books printed for mass distribution, before all information services became solid state. Not on the Stone, but on Earth. Their Earth. I suppose you’ve already guessed what sort of library this is.”

  “A quaint one. A museum,” she said.

  “Right. An antique library, better suited to those with antique habits, no? When you get to the third chamber library, you’ll become acquainted with the Stoners’ state-of-the-art systems.”

  He held out the first volume. It was printed in a style similar to that of the Mark Twain book, but with heavier boards and thick, even tougher plastic paper. She read the spine. ”‘Brief History of the Death, by Abraham Damon Farmer.”

  She opened to the printing history and read the date. ”2135. Our calendar?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are they talking about the Little Death?” she asked hopefully.

  “No.”

  “Something else,’ she murmured. She read the chronology heading the first chapter. ”‘From December 1993 to May 2005.”

  She closed the book on her thumb.”

  “Before I read any more, I want to ask a question.”

  “Ask away.” He waited, but it took her some time to phrase it properly in her head.

  “These are history books about a future, not necessarily our own, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “But if this chronology is ... right, appropriate ... if it could possibly be our future ... then there’s going to be a catastrophe in less than a month.”

  He nodded.

  “I’m supposed to prevent it? How? What the hell can I do?”

  “I don’t know what any of us can do. We’re already working on that angle. If ... a big if... it’s going to happen at all. At any rate, it should be obvious to you, as you read these books, that the Stone’s universe is not the same as ours in at least one important respect.”

  “And that is ... ?”

  “In the Stone’s past, no giant asteroid starship returned to the Earth-Moon vicinity.”

  “That might make a difference?”

  .”I’d think so, wouldn’t you?”

  She turned the page. ”How long do I have?”

  “I’m leaving tomorrow for Earth. You’ll be going to the first circuit the day after.”

  “Two days.”

  He nodded.

  “I’ll be staying here?”

  “If you find it acceptable. There’s an office behind the stacks outfitted as a sleeping area, with food and hot plate. Porta-potty. The guards will check on you every couple of hours. You’re not to tell any of them what you’re reading. But if you feel any sort of distress, let them know immediately. Any sort of distress. Even just getting sick to your stomach. Understand?”

  “I’ll stay here with you this first time.” He squeezed her shoulder gently. ”Take a break with me in a couple of hours, okay?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  She watched him settle into a cubicle seat. He took a slate out of his pocket and quietly typed on it.

  She turned the page on the first chapter and began. She did not read in a linear fashion, instead skipping from the middle of the book to the beginning, then to the end, looking for pages where the major events were synopsized, or conclusions were.

  Page 15

  In the last years of the 1980s, it became apparent to the Soviet Union and its client states that the Western world was winning—or would soon win—the war of technology and therefore ideology both on Earth and in space, with consequences unforeseen for the future of their nations and their system.

  They contemplated several ways of overcoming this technological superiority; none seemed practical. In the late 1980s, with the deployment of the first United States space-based defense systems, the Soviet states stepped up their efforts to obtain technological “fixes” through espionage and importing of embargoed goods—computers and other high-technology equipment but this was soon shown to be inadequate. In 1991, the space-based defense systems they themselves had deployed were shown to be inferior in design and ability, and it became obvious to the Soviet leadership that what had been predicted for years was in fact happening; the Soviet Union could not compete with the free world in technology.

  Most Soviet computer systems were centralized; privately owned or noncentralized systems were illegal (with a few exceptions—namely, the Agatha experiments), and the laws were rigorously enforced.

  Young Soviet citizens could not match the technological “savvy” of their counterparts in the Western bloc nations. The Soviet Union was soon going to suffocate under the weight of its own tyranny, remaining a twentieth- (or nineteenth-) century nation in a twenty-first-century world. They had no choice but to attempt, in the football (q.v.) terminology of the time, an “end run.” They had to test the courage and resolve of the Western bloc nations. If the Soviets failed, then by the turn of the century, they would be far weaker than their adversaries. The Little Death was inevitable.

  Patricia took a deep breath. She hadn’t seen reports of the Little Death handled from quite so distant—so historical—a perspective. She remembered nightmares as a girl, after living through the incredible tension and fear, and then seeing the results on television. She had learned to cope since, but these cold, critical evaluations—ingested in such an authoritative environment—brought back the shivers all too effectively.

  By comparison, the Little Death of 1993 was a low-technology bungle. A minor contretemps causing embarrassment as much as horror, it resulted in an insincere international resolve that resembled the mocking promises of young children. Afraid of their weapons, during that first conflict, the Western bloc and Soviet forces constantly “pulled their punches,” relying on the tactics and technology of past decades. When the engagements became nuclear—as all in command knew in their hearts they would—the space-based defense systems, still young and unproven, showed themselves to be remarkably effective. They could not, however, stop the near-shore submarine launches of the three missiles which destroyed Atlanta, Brighton and part of the coast of Brittany. The Russians could not protect their city of Kiev. The nuclear exchange was limited, and the Soviets and Western bloc countries capitulated almost simultaneously. But the rehearsal had already been conducted, and the Soviets had emerged with less “hits” than their adversaries.

  They had gained nothing but a deadly resolve: that they would not be defeated under any circumstances, nor would history overtake their outmoded system.

  The Death, when it came, was completely earnest and open. Every weapon was used as it had been designed to be used. There seemed to be no compunction about consequences.

  Page 35

  In retrospect, it se
ems completely logical that once a weapon is invented, it will be used. But we forget the blindness and obfuscation of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, when the most destructive weapons were regarded as walls of protection, and when the horror of Armageddon was seen as a deterrent no sane society would risk.

  But the nations were not sane—rational, composed, aware, but not sane. In each nation, the arsenal included potent distrust and even hatred ...

  The Little Death resulted in 4 million casualties, most in Western Europe and England. The Death resulted in approximately 2.2 billion casualties, and the numbers will always be uncertain, for by the time the body counts were “completed,” it is possible that as many bodies had rotted as had been counted. And, of course, as many more had been completely vaporized.

  Patricia wiped her eyes. ”This is awful,” she murmured.

  “You can take a break if you want,” Lanier said solicitously.

  “No ... not yet.” She continued skimming, back and forth ...

  In summation, the naval battles were hideous jokes of technology.

  During the Little Death, submarines were hunted (and in some cases, sunk) up to and even after the capitulation, but the great fleets only skirmished. In the major conflict, once the war began in earnest, about two hours after the first hostile actions, the navies of East and West went “in harm’s way.” In the Persian Gulf, the Northwestern Pacific, the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean (Libya had provided the Soviets with a Mediterranean base in 1997) the battles were fierce and quick. There were few victors. Sea battles during the Death lasted an average of half an hour, and many took less than five minutes. On the first day, while strategic intentions were being tested and before the large-scale escalations, the navies of the Eastern and Western blocs destroyed each other. They were the last great navies allowed on the oceans of the Earth, and their radioactive scrap still pollutes the waters, 130 years later.

  A peculiar phenomenon of the latter half of the twentieth century was the increase in “retreatists.”