Children of the Comet (4 page)

Karn seemed to be enjoying himself. “But I digress, gentlemen,” he said. “And lady,” he added negligently, with a nod to the Council's sole female member. “We were talking about public hysteria, weren't we? About the media-induced panic that ensued when the hoi polloi discovered that we were being crowded out of our home. So we turned our instruments on the nearby galaxies. We'd never detected signs of life at those distances before, but lo and behold, funding was suddenly found at a level that had never been available for the search for intelligent life within our
own
galaxy.

“Bad luck. Andromeda, our nearest neighbor at only two million light-years, proved to have evidence of intelligent life, after the data were analyzed with the new techniques and instruments. A hundred years earlier we would have been delighted. Now it was bad news. The emanations didn't come from just one or two stars; they came from the entire galaxy, and they were suggestively uniform. It seemed Andromeda had its First Ones too. So did the Magellanic Clouds, and every galaxy out to the Virgo Cluster, fifty million light-years away.

“But we had the Higgs drive. We'd had it for twenty years by then. It had already taken us to Alpha Centauri, Epsilon Eridani, Delta Pavonis, and the other interesting candidates in our little sphere. And it had done so at a constant one-G acceleration because it provided what amounted to unlimited fuel. The Higgs boson generates the masses of all the fundamental particles, and consequently, as virtual particles wink into existence, mediates the energy of the vacuum. When we learned how to manipulate the Higgs field, which exists everywhere, a starship could create its own fuel as it went along, in much the same way virtual particles are created in the vicinity of a black hole.

“So by being able to maintain a constant one-G acceleration, it was now possible to reach the nearer stars within a human lifetime. But what about
intergalactic
distances, at
millions
of light-years?”

Karn was in full lecture mode now. “A funny thing happens on the way to the speed of light. As you pass ninety-nine-point-nine percent and begin to add more nines after the decimal point, relativistic values rise steeply. Incredibly steeply. So while it took twenty-two years of ship time at one G to reach our own galactic­ center thirty thousand light-years away, a paltry investment of another
five
years would take us to the Andromeda galaxy­, two million light-years away. An additional five years would take us to the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, at a distance of fifty million light-years.”

He paused dramatically. “And in less than another thirty years of lifetime, one could reach the edge of the visible Universe.”

“He's reached the sales pitch,” Alten whispered. “But he's too late. They're out of patience.”

Karn had let his hands drop to his sides. “That was the idea anyway. But with the existence of the human race at stake, the petty bureaucrats in Brussels and Beijing and Suprawashington lost their nerve—”

“We know the story, Professor Karn,” Councilman Brego interrupted. “The visible edge of Creation was fourteen billion years away at the time. It still is for us here in 3C-273—we're barely keeping up with the expansion of the Universe. The infant galaxies might have been prebiotic as we saw them, but by the time we'd get there, life might have evolved, become extinct, and evolved again many times over.”

“But …” Karn began.

Brego raised a hand to stop him. “So they very wisely opted for a closer, younger quasar. A second-generation quasar. The odds were better. After all, in our own case, life didn't arise for more than ten billion years, when the sun—a second-generation­ star, by the way—was in its third billennium. The First Ones preceded humankind by only a few tens of thousands of years. The odds are that the same rule will hold true for 3C-273.”

“Brego's no fool,” Alten said in a low voice. “He may be a Neocreationist, but he knows his astrophysics.”

Karn didn't like being interrupted. He tried to stare Brego down. “I was about to say that I have no quarrel with your settling here. It's done, isn't it? We've planted our colonies. The rest is up to time. Thirty million years of it. I never had any interest in dropping off a load of jolly colonists in your hatchery.
My
people are after knowledge. And maybe, just maybe, after another fifteen billion years, we'll still be around to be humanity's hole card in a dying Universe. Carry humanity past the end of everything. Or into a new beginning.”

His voice rose and became strident. “We're asking again for you to let us have
Time's Beginning
before it's too late. Let us keep just one habitat. That's all my little band of truth-seekers needs. You can have the rest.”

He stood, offering each of them a challenging stare in turn.

“We'll take it under consideration, Professor Karn,” the chairman said. “We'll let you know.”

They caught up with Karn outside. The people attending the meeting were dispersing and returning along the manicured walks to their various jobs. It was a beautiful autumn day in Rebirth's northern temperate zone. A golden sun—a G-4 that still had a couple of billion years to go before it used up its hydrogen and grew into a red giant that would swallow its children—shone brilliantly in a nearly cloudless azure sky. The air was fragrant with the perfume of terrestrial wildflowers that were slowly winning a battle with Rebirth's native vegetation, and somewhere in the middle distance a meadowlark was singing its heart out.

“I hope you know you blew it, Delbert,” Joorn said. “The Council's decision isn't going to be favorable.”

Karn didn't seem to be at all perturbed. “Hell, I knew that going in,” he said. “I'm not going to wait for a decision. I just wanted to make it absolutely clear that I gave them one last chance.”

“If you think—” Joorn began.

Karn interrupted him. “How many people do you have in your party whom you can absolutely depend on?”

“Depend on? What are you talking about? So far I've got over four thousand signatures from dedicated Homegoers on our petition to the Council, and—”

Karn gave him a pitying look. “Petitions!” he snorted. “You've got twice as many dreamers in your little coalition as I have in mine, but mine have more fire in their bellies.”

“I don't see what—”

“And more discipline.”

Joorn and Alten exchanged apprehensive glances.

“I've made a young fellow named Miles Oliver my deputy,” Karn said. “With his military experience, he's been whipping them into shape. Miles made a name for himself in the Dissolutionist Wars of the '80s. Almost got himself hanged by the Corporate Nations League. Came out of it alive and went back to school. Brilliant student, with degrees in astrophysics and Brane Theory. He'll inherit my mantle when I go.” He looked sorrowfully at Alten. “That could have been you, my boy.”

Alten said, “I'm sorry, Professor Karn. I—”

“No apologies necessary. We go where life takes us. I'm sorry too.”

“I don't like where you're going with this, Delbert,” Joorn said. “You can't just—”

“All I ask is that you come to a little meeting back at the ship. Both of you. We have something to discuss.”

“I don't—”

“It concerns you, Joorn. Be there. Everybody can come out of this a winner.”

As Joorn hesitated, Alten said, “We'll be there, Professor.”

“Good.” Karn turned on his heel, and started walking away rapidly. Joorn saw him take the path that led to the primitive spaceport across the meadow.

“I don't like this,” Joorn said.

“Neither do I,” Alten said. “But if Karn means to involve us in something shady, we need to have our eyes wide open.”

CHAPTER 7

The habitat where Karn maintained his quarters still had several thousand people living in it, mostly diehard Endgamists who were putting off moving to Rebirth's surface until the last possible moment. Joorn had long been aware that the overwhelming majority of them were young people who had been born during
Time's Beginning
's long journey and who never had known what it was like to live on a planet. As disciples of Karn, they tended to cluster around their guru.

“It's about a quarter-mile down this corridor,” Joorn said as they floated along with the sparse traffic. “He's meeting us in the old physics classroom. He's still giving lectures there.”

“I know the way, Father,” Alten said.

Joorn glanced at him sharply, looking for guilt or defiance, but saw only the usual matter-of-fact expression on his face.

They passed a couple of security patrols along the way. But they weren't wearing the modest identification badges usually sported by the Council's security people. Instead they wore makeshift tabards inscribed with a stylized infinity symbol. All of them were young toughs identically armed with lengths of titanium pipe. Despite their unprofessional appearance, they obviously served some sort of unauthorized security function. As Joorn and Alten were passing, one such ragtag group had stopped an elderly couple for questioning. The man was indignantly protesting. One of the young thugs paused long enough to give Joorn a hard stare. Joorn couldn't tell if the fellow had recognized his captain.

“What's happening here?” Joorn asked Alten with a frown.

Alten didn't answer. He continued to look straight ahead, aiming his little hand fan to pull him along.

“Here we are,” Alten said, braking himself to a stop and swiveling in midair to plant himself upright on a stickymat.

Joorn tried the knob and found that the door was locked. He rattled the knob, and after a moment, someone on the other side opened the door.

Two young men wearing the infinity tabards put out their hands to stop them from proceeding, and one of them, to Joorn's amazement, made as if to frisk them.

“It's all right, Pfyfe,” an unfamiliar voice said from the other end of the room. “Let them through.”

Karn's desk was slanted catty-corner in front of a blackboard covered with scribbled equations and Feynman diagrams. A hollow-cheeked man who looked to be middle-aged was sitting in a chair drawn up next to the desk.

“That's him—Miles Oliver, the guy Karn was talking about,” Alten whispered. He stepped forward, leaving Joorn to follow.

“Glad you decided to come,” Karn said without getting up. “Your cooperation is going to be vital. I'm going to offer you a bargain, Joorn. With it, both of us have a chance to get what we want. Without it, the Council will have their way, and
Time's Beginning
will be dismantled for its junk value.”

He nodded to the bully boys at the door, and one of them, the one named Pfyfe, hurried up and, with a resentful look at Joorn and Alten, dragged a couple of chairs forward for them to sit in, though the microgravity provided by the ship's central core was barely sufficient to keep the seats of their pants in contact. Joorn noticed that Pfyfe had one of the ubiquitous titanium pipes tucked under his belt.

“Sorry about that little misunderstanding at the door,” Karn said. “We can't be too careful about security. We don't want the Council getting wind of this meeting.”

“What's this about, Delbert?” Joorn said. “And what do you mean, you're offering me a bargain?”

Miles Oliver spoke for the first time. He extended a hand with the fingers spread out and said, “It's like these fingers, see. When they're separated, they can't do much.” He abruptly clenched them. “But when you put them together, you have a fist.”

Karn smiled. “You'll have to excuse Miles. He's been making a lot of speeches lately.”

“And what are we going to do with this fist?” Joorn said.

“Why, we're going to hijack the ship and its remaining habitats, Joorn,” Karn said. “Then we're going to drop you and your sentimentalists off at the Milky Way, see you settled, then take the ship and its Higgs drive, together with the last habitat, build up its relativistic velocity to the edge of the Sanger limit, and continue on to the birth of time.”

His eyes were blazing, and Joorn could plainly see the hidden fanatic that Karn had always been. “We're not prepared to use force against innocent people, Delbert,” Joorn said gently. “We accept that the Council speaks for the majority.”

Oliver spoke up glibly. “We're not going to use force, Captain. Only the threat of force. And our combined numbers to back it up. You and your crowd of collaborators don't have to do a thing.”

Joorn turned to Alten. “Did you know about this?”

Alten avoided looking at him. He stared straight ahead and said nothing.

“We offered him a chance to come in with us,” Karn said. “I think deep down he's tempted. But he's loyal to his father.”

“We don't need him,” Oliver said.

“But you need me, don't you?” Joorn said. “To run the ship.”

“We could use your help,” Karn admitted. “But Miles is fully competent to do that.”

“He's still in training, isn't he?” Joorn said, and was rewarded by an immediate flash of resentment on Oliver's face.

“He can handle it. He might need your backup when we start out.”

“They can't do it without us, Father,” Alten interposed. “It takes a lot of manpower to maintain a starship like this for years and decades. You know that better than anybody. And he needs our numbers to give him legitimacy. Otherwise they're just a small band of malcontents committing piracy.”

“I promise you no one will get hurt,” Karn said. “And Alten's right, in a way. Between your constituents and mine, we're a significant minority in the total human population. We deserve to have a say in how the resource represented by
Time's Beginning
gets used.”

Joorn scratched the stubble on his chin. “No rough stuff?” he said.

“I promise you. We're going to temporarily inconvenience the relatively small number of settlers who still remain in orbit, but no one will get hurt. When we have control, we'll ship them down to Rebirth in one of the habitats. Those who want to join your returnees or my little band of explorers will be allowed to stay. In the meantime, I suggest that you round up as many of your followers who are already down below as you can and get them up here on some pretext or another. In small groups, it goes without saying.”

Joorn hesitated.

“Think about it,” Karn said earnestly. “You get to go home, albeit to a very changed home, and start the human race all over again in the Milky Way. I get to see the Universe at its birth, just seconds past the inflationary epoch. And maybe take the human race past the final collapse to a new beginning. And as for those intrepid Endgamist pioneers down below”—he couldn't keep his lip from curling in contempt—“they get to seed this late-term galaxy with our species while the Universe, Brego's God bless it, still has a few billion years to go. Everybody wins.”

“He's right, Father,” Alten said.

“Thank you, Alten,” Karn said without taking his eyes off Joorn. “Maybe during the long detour back to our”—his lip curled again—“ancestral nest in the Milky Way, I'll be able to persuade you to throw your lot in with us. I might not live long enough to see the birth of time, but you will.” His voice grew vibrant. “You have it in you to be the Aaron to my Moses, my boy.”

Joorn glanced at Miles Oliver long enough to see a flicker of envy cross his face. It was gone almost before he registered it.

He avoided looking at Alten. He turned back to Karn and said, “All right, Delbert. It's a bargain.”