The Starry Rift Part 10

Jordan Stolz looked startled, then thoughtfully amused. "I never thought of that! Of course-it's a flaw in the basic concept of the kit. The kit is useless when faced with a device that has always been faulty, because all past copies of itself are faulty too."

Tielman thought, I knew there would be a catch.

Stolz laughed. "No wonder I picked it up so cheaply-maybe that Sirian wasn't as stupid as he looked, or perhaps his stench addled my senses-"

Burleigh interrupted, "But the fuse, faulty or not, worked the first time around, otherwise we'd never have got out of the yard at all. Why shouldn't it work again?"

Breen said, "That the fuse didn't blow out on launch was a simple wild fluke. That fluke wouldn't happen again-I can guarantee it. Not with the drive chewed up the way it is now."

Burleigh puffed out his cheeks. "Well, that's that, then."

Tielman said, "I suggest you return to your studies, Mr. Breen. As for you, Stolz-you've got less than a day and a half to get that repair kit of yours to work."

Stolz cried, "Didn't you understand, Captain? It's a problem of principle! There's no way my repair kit can produce a usable version of that fuse-"

"You think so? Then I suggest you start looking for ways to prove yourself wrong."

Tielman would admit it to no one else, not even Burleigh, but he was deeply disappointed by Stolz's failure. Despite his innate pessimism, he had hoped that Stolz could pull off a miracle this time, as he had so often before. For the sake of morale he carefully kept from the crew all details of the Stolz fiasco. But he couldn't keep it from himself.

As the remaining time wore away, the furious tempo of work aboard the Pig increased, as ways to save the s.h.i.+p were dreamed up, tested, abandoned. Via the no-s.p.a.ce communications links suggestions poured into the s.h.i.+p from all over the inhabited galaxy, including from the designers of the Prandtl Drive. But Breen reported no real progress. The only option was to start up the drive with the faulty fuse jammed in place and its controlling computer disabled-but as Breen estimated there was a 98 percent probability of the drive destroying itself altogether if they tried it, this was all but suicide. As time ground down, however, Tielman told Breen to be prepared to take just that chance, if there were no other option.

Then, with the Flying Pig only ten hours away from tachy-impact with the red giant-and one hour away from hitting the distorted s.p.a.ce around the star-Burleigh came running to find Tielman. The aide looked excited. "Captain, it's Stolz. He says he's found a way to make his repair kit work."

This time Stolz was in drive control ahead of Tielman and Burleigh. He stood beside his apparently unchanged All-Purpose Repair Kit, hollow-eyed but beaming triumphantly. Breen was here, holding the faulty fuse, but with his arms folded and the stubborn, set expression of a man who has been fooled once and will not be fooled again.

Tielman said, "Well, Stolz?"

Stolz said smugly, "Save the congratulations for later, please, Captain. I fear there's not much time before-"

Perfectly on cue, a siren shrieked. The voice of one of the bridge crew rang through the s.h.i.+p. "All hands to stations. Captain to the bridge. Astrogation reports the s.h.i.+p is running into s.p.a.cetime turbulence ahead of expected time-repeat, ahead of expected time." The s.h.i.+p gave a premonitory shudder. "All hands to stations. Captain Tielman to the bridge. Secure all loose-"

Tielman shouted above the commotion, "We'll have to postpone this circus."

Burleigh yelled back, "Captain, there is no later. If we don't get the drive fired up now, we're finished."

The deck beneath their feet convulsed.

Breen shouted, "Captain, we're wasting time. We need the drive. Have I authority to put in the faulty fuse?"

"It's only a two percent chance!" Stolz yelled. "It's suicide!"

"Better two percent than no chance at all with you and your gadgetry!"

Tielman hesitated. Suddenly the decision was on him. "Are you sure, Stolz?"

"Captain, I am."

The s.h.i.+p shuddered again. Still the intercom called Tielman's name.

"All right, Stolz. Breen, hand over the fuse." Breen opened his mouth to protest. "Save it. We'll hold an inquest later-if there is a later. Just do it, and give Stolz all the help he needs. Move! Burleigh, you're with me."

The atmosphere on the bridge was taut with energy as Tielman and Burleigh took their posts. The Pig shuddered again. Tielman called, "Report!"

Burleigh consulted his readouts. A large tridee screen over the main display tank filled up with an image of a rough sphere of some crawling gray substance. It reminded Tielman of a nest of maggots.

Burleigh said, "This is a visual representation of the quasi-radiation the star's tachy-matter is emitting. It turns s.p.a.cetime lumpy and turbulent, as you can see."

"And this is what we'll be flying through."

The image abruptly magnified, revealing in detail a small blank gray area. "Astrogation say this is the area we'll hit in three minutes. Astrophysics reports it's a dense knot at the center of the storm of turbulence through which we're flying."

"The eye of the hurricane," Tielman said darkly.

"Yes, sir."

A crewman called out, "Two minutes thirty seconds to that epicenter."

Tielman slammed a b.u.t.ton. "Breen! What's going on down there?"

The chief engineer's voice replied, "Stolz's device has produced another copy of the fuse. It looks all right. We're just starting tests before-"

"Two minutes."

"To no-s.p.a.ce with tests! Shove that fuse in and get the drive ready to fire. The s.h.i.+p's two minutes-"

"One minute thirty."

"-away from disaster-"

Burleigh caught Tielman's eye. "Captain, the helmsmen are asking if you want to take the wheel yourself."

Tielman looked at the rus.h.i.+ng gray clouds on the tridee screen. Even if the drive worked, it would be a rough flight. "Yes. Patch the controls through to this chair."

"One minute."

"Captain! This is Breen. We've got the fuse ready. We can fire the drive on your order."

Tielman hesitated for one precious second. Cursing the chief executive officer, the shareholders of Galactic Technologies, the Coal Sack pirates, cauchium, Prandtl, Stolz, and all the malevolent G.o.ds of s.p.a.ce, he ordered, "Fire."

He waited through a second that seemed as long as an eternity. Then he felt a heavy surge that pushed him into his seat.

The intercom relayed exultant shouts from drive control. "She's holding, Captain!"

Burleigh said, "The wheel's yours, sir."

"Thirty seconds."

Tielman's hands hovered over the joystick and panels set into the arms of his chair. The s.h.i.+p had come alive, but she quivered, as if in fright.

"Twenty seconds. Nineteen-"

"Cut that babble." The bridge fell silent.

Tielman studied the tridee screen. Which way? The "hurricane eye" was a featureless, bland wall, stretching out of sight in all directions-featureless save for a hairline crack in the upper center. How deep was the crack? Was it wide enough? No time, no time! Tielman made his choice and wrenched at the joystick.

An invisible hand forced him deeper into his seat as the s.h.i.+p's nose lifted in a tight, cruel arc.

The Pig shot through the crack in the wall of turbulence. Now Tielman flew in a sky through which huge gray ma.s.ses tumbled, like a fly surrounded by falling elephants. Two immense clouds rushed together from above and below, threatening to crush the s.h.i.+p. Tielman's breath was forced out of his lungs as he dragged the s.h.i.+p through another tight arc. The Pig raced out from between the two ma.s.ses, leaving them to splash together harmlessly. Tielman maintained the curve of the s.h.i.+p's path and piled on still more speed. He was aware of frightened squawks from Engineering but disregarded them. He had to get the s.h.i.+p out of this gray chaos. His eyes probed the tridee display, searching for breaks through which he might reach free s.p.a.ce- A circular breach, fast closing.

Tielman hauled the s.h.i.+p around and called for still more speed, and still more, as he gambled everything in a final race to beat the closure of the gap. The air of the bridge was rent by the thin screams of tortured machinery and tearing metal.

The Flying Pig squirted through the gap.

The "progress meeting" in the captain's cabin was going with more of a swing than most parties he remembered. And the guest of honor was, of course, Jordan Stolz.

Tielman said, "All right, Stolz, confession time. Let us in on the secret."

Breen said, "Yes, how did you produce that faultless fuse? If your repair kit swaps damaged objects for earlier editions of themselves-and if every earlier edition of that fuse was imperfect . . ."

Stolz smiled, delighted to be the center of attention. "It's very simple. All the kit needed was a little tinkering. Those old Sirians hadn't built as well as they thought they had, but with the a.s.sistance of Jordan Stolz-"

Gregg of Astrogation said, "Yes, yes, but what did you do?"

"I detected a time-symmetry in the governing tau-equations. With a blackboard, I could show you the terms that-" He was shouted down, and continued, "Very well, let's skip the math. After a little thought and a lot of experimentation, I found I could reverse a polarity in the repair kit. This I did, so that now the Kit reaches into the future of the damaged artifact, not its past!"

That was greeted by stunned silence.

Horne of Astrophysics said, "But, granting that that's possible- and reaching into the future seems no more absurd than into the past-I don't see how it helps."

Stolz smiled. "Imagine I have the fuse. In the present I hold a damaged copy. In the future, after I have used the kit, I will have an undamaged copy, because that is the purpose of the kit. And so there is a point in the future of the fuse after which it will cease to be in a damaged state. Yes? So that if a three-dimensional cross-section is taken from after that point, an undamaged copy of the fuse will be retrieved. Well, then, all the kit has to do is to reach into the future past the moment of its own use and retrieve a flawless copy. You see? Simple."

Burleigh said, in a weak voice, "Let me get this straight. The kit replaces the damaged object with a copy of itself which resulted from it being replaced by the kit with a copy of itself-did I get that right?"

"Young man," said Stolz, "I've talked to you about this before. You persist in thinking in terms of simple, old-fas.h.i.+oned causality, which is inapplicable. The problem must be considered in terms of a new atemporal causality-in which the kit's function is a neat causal circle."

"Like a chicken hatching out of its own egg," Tielman said.

"Exactly, Captain!"

Breen said sternly, "Oh, I've had enough of this. It's all ridiculous! Quite impossible."

Stolz raised an eyebrow. "Ridiculous it may be. Impossible it is not. I offer you proof in the fact that we are all alive today."

Breen and the others were only just warming up for the fight, but Tielman interrupted. "Gentlemen," he said, pouring another round, "I suggest we stop looking this gift horse in the mouth. The All-Purpose Repair Kit has saved our lives, and that is all that's important. I offer a toast to the inhabitants of Sirius IV, their personal hygiene challenges, and their glorious ancestors."

"I'll drink to that!" said Jordan Stolz.

The party went on all night. But occasionally Burleigh could be heard to mutter stupidly, "But who repaired the fuse?"

STEPHEN BAXTER lives in Northumberland, in the north of England, and has been a full-time writer since 1995. His first stories appeared in Interzone in the late 1980s, and he has subsequently published more than twenty novels (two in collaboration with Sir Arthur C. Clarke and five for younger readers), four collections of short fiction, and three nonfiction books. He has won the Philip K. d.i.c.k, John W. Campbell Memorial, British Science Fiction a.s.sociation, Kurd La.s.switz, Seiun, Locus, and Sidewise awards. His most recent novels include the Destiny's Children trilogy; the Time Tapestry Quartet, the Time's Odyssey Trilogy (with Sir Arthur C. Clarke); and The H-Bomb Girl, a novel for young adults. His stories have been collected in The Hunters of Pangaea and Resplendent.

His Web site is www.stephenbaxter.co.uk.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

"Repair Kit" is my homage to the great science fiction short stories of the 1940s and 1950s, especially by Robert Sheckley: a genuine SF idea at the core, jeopardy, a ticking clock, a twist, and, above all, humor.

THE DISMANTLED INVENTION OF FATE.

Jeffrey Ford.

The ancient astronaut, John Gaghn, lived atop a mountain, Gebila, on the southern sh.o.r.e of the Isle of Bistasi. His home was a sprawling, one-story house with whitewashed walls, long empty corridors, and sudden courtyards open to the sky. The windows held no gla.s.s, and late in the afternoon the ocean breezes rushed up the slopes and flowed through the place like water through a mermaid's villa. Around the island, the sea was the color of grape jam due to a tiny red organism that, in summer, swarmed across its surface. Exotic birds stopped there on migration, and their high trilled calls mixed with the eternal pounding of the surf were a persistent music heard even in sleep.

Few ever visited the old man, for the mountain trails were, in certain spots, treacherously steep and haunted by predators. Through the years, more than one reporter or historian of s.p.a.ce travel had attempted to scale the heights, grown dizzy in the hot island sun, and turned back. Others simply disappeared along the route, never to be heard from again. He'd seen them coming through his antique telescope, laboring in the ascent, appearing no bigger than ants, and smiled ruefully, knowing just by viewing them at a distance which ones would fail and which determined few would make the cool shade and sweet aroma of the lemon groves of the upper slopes. There the white blossoms would surround them like clouds and they might briefly believe that they were climbing into the sky.

On this day, though, Gaghn peered through his telescope and knew the dark figure he saw climbing Gebila would most definitely make the peak by twilight and the rising of the ringed planet in the east. He wanted no visitors, but he didn't care if they came. He had little to say to anyone, for he knew that Time, which he'd spent a life abusing on deep-s.p.a.ce voyages sunk in cryogenic sleep and hurtling across galaxies at near the speed of light, would very soon catch up and deliver him to oblivion. If this visitor wanted to know the history of his voyages, he felt he could sum it all up in one sentence and then send the stranger packing. "I've traveled so far and yet never arrived," he would say.

After his usual breakfast of a cup of hot water with a whole lemon squeezed into it, a bowl of tendrils from the telmis bush, and the still-warm heart of a prowling valru, he tottered off, with the help of a cane, into the lemon grove to sit on his observation deck. He settled his frail body gently into a Bentwood rocker and placed upon the table in front of him a little blue box, perfectly square on all sides, with one red dot in the center of the side faceup. His left hand, holding in two fingers a crystal the shape of a large diamond, shook slightly as he reached forward and positioned the point of the clear stone directly above that red dot.

When he drew back his hand, the crystal remained, hovering a hairsbreadth above the box. He cleared his throat and spoke the word-Zadiiz-and the many-faceted stone began to spin like a top. He leaned back in the rocker, turning his face, a web of wrinkles, bearing a grin, a wide nose, and a pair of small round spectacles of pink gla.s.s, to the sun. As the chair began to move, a peaceful music of flutes and strings seeped out of the blue box and spiraled around him.

He dozed off and dreamed of the planets he'd visited, their landscapes so impossibly varied; the long cold centuries of frozen slumber on deep-s.p.a.ce journeys filled with entire dream lives burdened by the unquenchable longing to awake; the wonderful rocket s.h.i.+ps he'd piloted; the strange and beautiful aliens he'd befriended, bartered with, eluded, and killed; the suit that preserved his life in hostile atmospheres with its bubble helmet and jet pack for leaping craters. Then he woke for a moment, only to doze again and this time dream of Zadiiz.

He'd come upon her in his youth, on one of the plateaus amidst the sea of three-hundred-foot-high red gra.s.s covering the southern continent on the planet Yarmit-Sobit. He'd often wondered if it was random chance or something predestined that he'd have chosen that place at that time of all the places in the universe to set down his shuttle and explore. The village he came upon, comprised of huts woven from the red gra.s.s, lying next to a green lake, was idyllic in its serenity.

The people of the village, sleek and supple, the color of an Earth sky, were near-human in form, save for a ridged fin the length of the spine, ending in a short tail, orange eyes without irises, and sharp-sided fingers perfect for cutting gra.s.s. In their sensibility, they were more than human, for they were supremely empathetic, even with other species, like his; valued friends.h.i.+ps; and had no word for cruelty. He stayed among them, fished with them off the platforms that jutted out over the deep sea of gra.s.s for the wide winged leviathans they called hurrurati, and joined in their ceremonies of smoke and calculation. Zadiiz was one of them.

From the instant he first saw her, flying one of the orange kites crafted from the inflated bladder of the hurrurati on the open plateau, he had a desire to know her better. He challenged her to a foot race, and she beat him. He challenged her to a wrestling match, and she beat him. He challenged her to a game of tic-tac-toe he taught her using a stick and drawing in the dirt. This he finally won, and it drew a laugh from her-the sound of her joy, the most vibrant thing he'd encountered in all his travels. As the days went on, she taught him her language, showed him how to find roots in the rich loam of the plateau and how to wrangle and ride the giant, single-horned porcine creatures called sheefen, and explained how the universe was made by the melting of an ice giant. In return, he told her about the millions of worlds beyond the red star that was her sun.

Eventually the mother of the village came to him and asked if he would take the challenge of commitment in order to be bonded to Zadiiz for life. He agreed and was lowered by a long rope off the side of the plateau into the depths of the sea of red gra.s.s. In among the enormous blades, he discovered schools of birds that swam like fish through the hidden world, and froglike creatures that braved the heights, leaping from one thick strand of red to stick to another. Even deeper down, as he finally touched the ground, where very little sunlight fell, he encountered large white insects that went about on two legs, with antennae and six arms each. He'd hidden his ray gun in his boot and thus had the means to survive for the duration of his stay below the surface.

Upon witnessing the power of his weapon against a carnivorous leething, the white insects befriended him, communicating through unspoken thoughts they fired into his head from their antennae. They showed him the sights of their secret world, cautioned him to always be wary of snakes (which they called weeha), and took him to stay overnight in the skeletal remains of a giant hurrurati, where they fed him a meal of red-gra.s.s sugar and revealed their incomprehensible philosophy of the sufficient. When he left, they gave him an object they'd found in the belly of the dead hurrurati, which they had no name for, although he knew it to be some kind of metal gear. Two days later, the rope was again lowered, and he was retrieved back to the plateau. Zadiiz could hardly believe how well he'd survived and was proud of him. During their bonding ceremony, Gaghn placed the curio of the gear, strung on a lanyard, around her neck.

It wasn't long before the astronaut's restlessness, which had flogged him on across the universe, finally returned to displace the tranquility of life on the plateau. He needed to leave, and he asked Zadiiz to go with him. She courageously agreed, even though it was the belief of her people that the dark sea beyond the sky was a sea of death. The entire village gathered around and watched as the shuttle carried them up and away. Legends would be told of the departure for centuries to come.

Gaghn docked the shuttle in the hold of his s.p.a.ce vessel, the Empress, and when Zadiiz stepped into the metal, enclosed world of the s.h.i.+p, she trembled. They spent some time merely orbiting her planet, so that she might grow accustomed to the conditions and layout of her new home. Then, one day, when he could withstand the impulse to travel no longer, he led her to the cryo-cradle and helped her to lie down inside. He tried to explain that there would be long, intricate dreams that would seem to her she was awake and living her life, and that some could be quite horrendous, but to remember they were only dreams. She nodded. They kissed by fluttering eyelashes together (as was the custom of her people), and he pushed the b.u.t.ton that made the top of her berth slide down over her. In the seconds before the gas did its work, he heard her scream and pound upon the lid. Then silence, and with a troubled conscience, he set the coordinates for a distant constellation and went, himself, to sleep.

Upon waking, light years away from Yarmit-Sobit, he opened her cradle and discovered her lifeless. He surmised that a nightmare that attended the frozen sleep had frightened the life out of her. Her eyes were wide, her mouth agape, her fists clenched against some dreamed terror that had stalked her imagination. He took her body down to Eljesh, the planet the Empress now orbited, to the lace forest at the bottom of an ancient crater where giant pure white trees, their branches like the entwining arms of so many cosmic snowflakes, reached up into an ashen sky. He'd intended the beauty of this place to be a surprise for her. Unable to contemplate burying her beneath the soil, he laid her next to a milk-white pool on a flat rock, closed her eyes, brushed the hair away from her face, and took with him, as a keepsake, the gear he'd given her.

When he fled Eljesh, it wasn't simply the wanderl.u.s.t drawing him onward now; he was also pursued with equal ferocity by her memory. He always wondered why he couldn't have simply stayed on the plateau, and that question became his new traveling companion through intergalactic wars, on explorations to the fiery hearts of planets, pirate operations, missions of goodwill, and all the way to the invisible wall at the end of the universe, after which there was no more, and back again.

He knew many, and many millions more knew of him, but he'd never told a soul of any species what he'd done, until one night, high in the frozen mountains, near the pole of the Idiot planet (so named for its harsh conditions and a judgment upon any who would dare to travel there). Somehow he'd wound up in a cave, weathering a blizzard, with a wise old Ketuban, universally considered to be the holiest and most mystical cosmic citizen in existence. This fat old fellow, eyeless, but powerfully psychic, looking like a pile of mud with a gaping mouth, four tentacles, and eight tiny legs, spoke in whispered bursts of air, but spoke the truth.