Empire's End (41 page)

Murph turned to Kea. “What’s our status?”

“Engine’s in okay shape. Everything else is so-so. Including fuel.” Kea had no choice but to be honest.

“I don’t know,” Murph said. “I just don’t feel right making this kind of decision myself.”

“Can’t buzz the Powers That Be,” Vasoovan said “We’re way out of range.”

“If you turn back now,” Fazlur warned, “I swear I’ll see you fired and blackballed for life.”

“Come on, Doc,” Murph said. “Don’t be like that. I’m just sayin‘ I feel real uncomfortable decidin’ this whole thing solo.”

“I’ll take responsibility,” Fazlur said.

“That wouldn’t be right,” Murph said. All he meant was it wouldn’t be enough to protect his big-hammed behind. “How about we vote on it? Just the officers and you two. We don’t need to ask the crew anything.”

Kea almost laughed aloud. A ship’s captain calling for a vote. Instead, he said, “Why not?” He raised a hand. “Start with me. I say we go.”

“Crap on you!” Vasoovan said. “I vote for home.”

Fazlur and Ruth joined Kea. Murph could see which way the land lay now. “Okay. I’ll go along with the majority. Sorry, Vasoovan, but I gotta keep the peace. It’s my job.”

And so the last stage of Operation Alva was launched as cynically and halfheartedly as the first. Kea didn’t care. He was determined to see the other side of God’s big coin. An old line crawled into his brain: ‘This is the stuff dreams are made of.“

A fine rain of fire curtained across space. And that curtain seemed to swirl and billow against a gentle cosmic wind. It was a place where two universes touched… and bled through.

Kea peered at the image on the ship’s main screen and watched birth and death enacted instantly as small particles from one universe touched one from another and exploded in pinprick bursts of light. Pinbursts that played up and down the shuddering curtain that Fazlur called a “discontinuity.” Kea thought, Discontinuity? No. More like the Gate to Paradise. Or Hell.

Fazlur’s voice came from behind him: “Now, Richards… if you could take sweep in a bit farther…”

Kea worked the joystick. Onscreen, the sweep he’d helped Fazlur and Ruth deploy swooped into view. It consisted of a small cylindrical unit designed for use as a ‘tween-ship short-range courier, now pushing a net made of specially treated plas wires. On a bar across the bottom of the screen, numbers jumped and played.

“Just a little more…” Fazlur’s voice coaxed. “A little more…”

Suddenly the sweep’s net was alive with pinbursts. Anti-particles colliding against particles. A small drama being played out against the plas wires of the net. Kea kept the sweep steady on its dip-in-and-out course. It wasn’t hard. The joystick’s sensors showed no interference. Then the pinbursts stopped abruptly as the sweep completed its journey and returned to normal space.

Fazlur’s voice gloated behind him. “I’ve done it! Done it!” Kea knew Fazlur was seeing his name in history books. The first scientist to explore another universe—albeit by remote. He punched in a command putting the sweep on autoreturn and swiveled in his chair.

“Done what?” came Vasoovan’s annoying twitter. “We’re in on this same as you, buster. It’s a team. Right, Murph? We all get equal shares.”

“Uh… Gotta get back to you on that,” Murph hemmed. “See what the book says.”

Kea could tell that good old team player Murph would like the bonus cut in the rank-share system. He could see those crafty old eyes in that disarming hail-fellow face buzz in calculation. Let’s see, now, he’d be thinking… That way me and Fazlur split fifty percent… That’d be… Uh see… what’s the biggest bonus the company ever put out?

“I don’t gotta read the book, Murph,” Vasoovan shrilled. “This is expedition rules, fella. Fazlur as team leader gets twenty. We all split the rest. Equals.”

“Will you all just stop it,” Fazlur stormed. “Who cares about the company bonus? Put it in a glass, swallow, and urinate.”

“Say…” Murph said. “If you don’t want any part of your bonus, we’ll be glad to split up your share. Won’t we, Vasoovan?”

“You got it, Murph.”

Kea broke in. “Why don’t you explain it to them, Fazlur?” This was the third time he’d taken the sweep through. And he’d watched over Fazlur’s and Ruth’s shoulders as they figured and refigured. He had a faint idea what Fazlur had discovered. But it was very faint.

Fazlur nodded. He turned his craggy, handsome face to its best profile. “It’s as simple as this,” he said. “We have just reached into another universe—and brought back evidence of its most basic material. This material—in our own universe—would become the source of unlimited power. A small flask of it, my friends, might supply all the wants and needs of a city and its inhabitants for a hundred years.” Fazlur giggled. The giggle turned to laughter. The cabin was silent until he stopped. “So much for your damn bonus,” he said.

The faint idea bloomed to understanding in Kea’s head. Power… Fuel. Wars had been fought over it. Hundreds of thousands had died on oil fields. Power… Weapons. Hundreds of thousands more had died in the nuclear fires of the past. Power. Wealth. The greatest fortunes—and families—had been founded on its gold. He looked around the room at the others. Each in his or her own way understood. Even the lowliest grease monkey would have understood. You did not come to space… and stay… and not understand these things. Kea looked at Murph: Jock’s face. Clown face. But somehow oddly solemn. Vasoovan: Pink features paler than he’d ever seen. Big predator’s grin. Tentacle curling and uncurling. Ruth: Eyes alight. Red tongue-tip flicking out. And himself.

He wished he could see himself.

“Uh… Doc…” came Murph’s voice. Throaty. “What do you call this… uh… stuff?”

“A good question, Murph,” Fazlur said. Kea didn’t blame him for sounding so pedantic. “It’s the opposite of matter in our universe. But we can’t call it anti-matter. Because we already have anti-matter in this universe. Perhaps we should express it in its simplest terms.” He turned to Ruth. “Something commercial. Recognizable even to the ignorant. I find it always helps when I make my presentations to funding boards.”

“Easy.” She shrugged. “If it isn’t anti-matter, exactly… then it’s new anti-matter. Stress the newness, somehow.”

“How about Anti-Matter Two?” Kea suggested.

“I like it,” Ruth said. “Simple.”

“Anti-Matter Two… Yes. That’ll do. Very very well. The heading will get their attention.” Fazlur was satisfied.

“What I like,” Murph said, “is it fits real nice on the side of a building. AM2.” He drew the symbols in the air: AM2.

“How sure are you about this, Doc?” Vasoovan twittered. “You got proof?”

Fazlur rose, turned from them, and looked up on the screen at the curtain of fire. “I’m sure. Very sure. And I have the proof. But it is not absolute. And in this, my friends, we must be absolute. Otherwise…” He turned back, the fire raining on the screen behind him. “There are those who would kill to control this. You
must
realize this.”

Fazlur stared at them hard. One by one. He came to Kea. Richards thought of the Bargetas. The other great families—and fortunes. And the opportunity
and
threat they would see in AM2. The issue was control. The Haves against the Have Nots. The man was right. The Haves would attack with lawyers, writs—and assassins. Kea nodded. He knew. As did the others.

“If we want any rights—bound-in-steel guarantee rights—to our discovery,” Fazlur said, “we must make that proof patenta-ble. A patent so strong that no one can question our rights.”

“How do we get proof, Doc?” Murph asked.

Fazlur pointed at the screen. “We have to go in there to get it,” he said. “And come back again.”

Kea had never heard silence so thick. There was no argument. No heated questions: Can it be done?… Are you sure?… What if?… The struggle was within each of them. They all knew Fazlur would answer; Yes. I am. I don’t know… I’ve never been there before. Kea swallowed. He looked at the screen. He saw the gentle fire rain, the billow and curl of space, as alluring as any woman he’d ever known.

He… Just… Had… To… See.

That line again: ‘The stuff dreams are made of.“

Kea cleared his throat, startling the others to life.

“I think we should go,” he said.

it was a place like the other.

but not familiar.

it was…

not.

i don’t like it.

why?

i don’t know.

is it colder?

no. but i’m… cold.

is it darker?

no. but i can’t… see.

what’s wrong, then?

i’m…

lost.

A juddering into normalcy. They all looked at each other, dazed. Ruth’s hand crept toward Kea’s. Fazlur saw it An odd light came to his eye. Then the screen caught his attention. “We’re on the other side,” he said quietly.

Kea looked up. The remotes were panning along the rear of the ship. The curtain of fire was behind them.

Destiny I
was through.

“Reckoning by the discontinuity,” Murph said. Voice crisp and professional. “On time-tick…”

Vasoovan’s twitter was modulated: “Check. Coordinates… x350… Proceeding…”

“Half power…” Kea broke in. “Drive steady. All functions normal.”

“Readings… positive on the port sensors, Doctor,” Ruth said. Calm.

“Course starboard nine now… Thank you, Ruth. A little less on the data stream, please… There you go.”

Fazlur’s fingers flew across his key unit, monitoring the incoming data. He nodded. Yes. Yes. And yes. Then he keyed out. “I think we can go home now, Captain,” he said. Formal.

Murph nodded to him. Stiff. “Thank you, Doctor.” Then; “Vasoovan. Set the course for XO… We’re going home.”

It
came as a spot on the screen that blazed the colors/no colors of this strange universe.

An infinitesminal spot.

“Murph! Eleven o’clock!”

“What the crap is it?”

“Dunno. Pint-sized moon, maybe.”

“Don’t look too close.”

“Naw. Not real close. But maybe we oughta—”

Two bodies approached in space. Composed of mass. Potential of that mass. And gravitational displacement.

But one was the stuff of one reality.

One another.

Opposites attract.

What do double opposites do?

The explosion took
Destiny I
midships, cutting it like a shark ripping into fat-bellied tuna.

Fifteen died.

Five survived.

The gods of this place were kind to the fifteen.

Kea came awake. It was dark and bloody. Acrid.

There was no pain.

Numbness.

He heard voices.

“All dead.” A wail.

“There’s us, Murph! There’s us. We’re alive.”

Me too, Kea wanted to say. I’m alive, too.

Not even a groan escaped.

“What’ll we do? Oh, God, what’ll we do.”

“I’d kill you, Murph. I’d kill you if it wouldn’t leave me all alone.”

“Gotta think. Gotta think.”

“It’s your fault, Murph. We never shoulda come, damn you!”

Check the damage, Kea wanted to say. The urge was desperate… Check the damage.

He felt his lips tighten to speak.

A wave washed in and took him away.

He was thirsty.

God he was thirsty.

A voice. Ruth’s.

“Hell, I don’t know. He’s broken up, or something. Inside. I’m no physician.”

“What about Fazlur?” Murph’s voice.

“Who cares?” came the twitter—Vasoovan. “He got us into this.”

“Castro’s worse,” he heard Ruth say. “I followed the directions in the medkit best I could. The stump stopped bleeding, if that’s any consolation.” Her voice was cold.

“Still out?”

“Still out. Thank God. Those screams were awful.”

Water, Kea thought. I’m so thirsty.

“We’ve got practically no rations,” Vasoovan shrilled. “And very little water.”

“I say we put them both out of their misery. And we can live a little longer.”

“That wouldn’t be right,” Ruth said. Perfunctory.

“Naw,” Murph said. “Guess it wouldn’t… Besides, long as they’re out, they ain’t costin‘ us anything. Except air. And we’ve plenty of that.”

The tide lifted Kea up again and carried him off.

Pain. Waves and jabs of it.

But it was bearable pain. And there was no numbness.

There was still no light. Eyes… felt… crusted shut. Dried… What?… Blood? Yes, blood.

“Jeez, this suit stinks,” he heard Murph say.

There were sounds of fastenings being opened. The clank of equipment falling.

“Did you get back as far as the drive unit this time?” Ruth asked.

“Yeah. Wasn’t hit too hard, either. And the input to the controls checks out.”

“Can we run it?” Came the twitter.

Kea heard Murph sigh. “I
said
it wasn’t hit too hard. Meaning… it’s fixable. But not by me. And not by anyone else here.”

Kea struggled the word out “Water.”

“Hey, it’s Richards.” Murph said.

“What’s he want?” Vasoovan asked.

“Water. He said water,” Ruth said. “I’ll get it for him.”

“Hey, Murph,” Vasoovan said. “We didn’t talk about
this
, Murph. Last we talked, you said they ain’t costin‘ us anything. Remember?”

“I remember.”

Kea was suddenly frightened that a decision was being reached. And even more frightened how it would come out. Where was Ruth? Why wasn’t she speaking up for him?

Don’t wait for Ruth!

“I can fix it,” Kea croaked.

“He
really
is awake,” Ruth said. Meaning: he heard us talking.

“What’s that you say, partner?” It was Murph. Jovial. Kea felt him move close. Imagined him peering down. “You say you can fix it? Fix the drive?”

Kea wanted to say more. A lot more. But he hadn’t the strength. So there was only one response. “Water,” he croaked. Then he fell back. It was his first and final offer.

A rustling. Then cool water touched his lips. He lapped it until he’d had enough. Perfume floated down to him, along with a voice. “Oh, darling,” Ruth said. “I’m so very happy you’re alive.” A kiss brushed his cheek.

He slept.

Kea hoisted himself on his good arm to get a better view. The other was strapped tight to his body. “That’s a good seal,” he said. “That’s a keeper. Now… lift it up and you’ll see a Y-shaped impression.”