Starplex (22 page)

Keith turned his attention back to the center of the bay.

Boxcar's bundle of ropes had slid to the floor, near the discarded sensor web. They were reaching up to the frame and disengaging the blue pump from the central green pod, and gently lifting the pump to the floor. Keith could see the pump's large central breathing orifice cycling through its usual four-step sequence of open, stretch, compress, and close. After about forty seconds, though, the sequence started to get distorted as the pump seemed to lose track of what it was doing. The orifice movements became jumbled--opening, then immediately compressing; trying to stretch wide after closing. There was a small gasping sound--the only sound in the entire bay. Finally the pump stopped moving.

All that was left was the pod, sitting on the saddle-shaped frame.

Keith whispered to Rissa: "How long can the pod survive without the pump?"

Rissa turned to him, her eyes wet. She blinked several times, dislodging tears. "A minute," she said at last. "Perhaps two."

Keith reached over and squeezed her hand.

Everything was still for about three minutes. The pod expired quietly, without movement or sound--although somehow, apparently, the Ibs knew when it was gone, and, as one, they began to roll out of the bay. All their webs were dark; not a word was passing between them. Keith and Rissa were the last to leave. Butterfly would return shortly, Keith knew, to take care of jettisoning Boxcar's remains into space.

As they walked out of the bay, Keith thought about his own future. He was going to live a long, long time, apparently. He wondered whether billions of years from now he'd be able to escape the mistakes of his own past.

They couldn't sleep that night, of course. Boxcar's death had upset Rissa, and Keith was wrestling with his own demons. They lay side by side in their bed, wide-awake, Rissa staring at the dark ceiling, Keith looking at the faint red spot on the wall made by the light seeping around the plastic card he used to cover his clock face.

Rissa spoke--just one word. "If . . ."

Keith rolled onto his back. "Pardon?"

She was quiet for a time. Keith was about to prod her again, when she said, very softly, "If you don't remember how to make a u or an apostrophe, will you remember me--remember us?" She rolled over, looked at him. "You're going to live another ten billion years. I can't begin to comprehend that."

"It's . . . mind-numbing," said Keith, shaking his head against the pillow. He, too, was quiet for a time. Then: "People always fantasize about living forever. Somehow, 'forever' seems less daunting than putting a specific date on it. I could deal with immortality, but contemplating the specific notion of being alive ten billion years from now . . .

I just can't make sense of it."

"Ten billion years," said Rissa again, shaking her head.

"Earth's sun will long be dead, Earth will be dead." A beat.

"I will be dead."

"Maybe. Maybe not. If it is life prolongation, then surely it's because of your studies here on Starplex. After all, why else would I have ended up as one of the recipients of the process? Maybe we're both alive ten billion years from now."

More silence.

"And together?" said Rissa, at last.

Keith exhaled noisily. "I don't know. I can't imagine any of it." He sensed he was saying the wrong thing. "But . . .

but if I'm to face that much of a future, I would want it to be with you."

"Would you?" said Rissa, at once. "Would we have anything left to explore, to learn about each other, after all that time?"

"Maybe . . . maybe it's not corporeal existence," said Keith. "Maybe my consciousness is transferred into a machine. Wasn't there a cult on New New York .that wanted to do that--copy human brains into computers?

Or maybe . . . maybe all of humanity becomes one giant mind, but the individual psyches can still be tapped. That would be--"

"Would be less frightening that the concept of personally living another ten billion years. In case you haven't done the math yet, that would mean that so far, you've only lived one two-hundred-millionth of the age you're going to become."

She paused and sighed.

"What?" asked Keith.

"Nothing."

"No, you're upset about something."

Rissa was quiet for about ten seconds. "Well, it's just that your current midlife crisis has been hard enough to live with. I'd hate to see what kind of stunts you're going to pull when you turn five billion."

Keith didn't know what to say. Finally, he settled on a laugh. It sounded hollow to him, forced.

Quiet again--long enough that he thought perhaps she'd . at last fallen asleep. But he couldn't sleep himself. Not yet, not with these thoughts going through his head.

"Dulcinea?" he whispered softly--so softly that if she were already asleep he hopefully wouldn't wake her.

Keith swallowed. Maybe he should leave the issue alone, but . . .

"Our anniversary is coming up."

"Next week," said the voice in the darkness.

"Yes," said Keith. "It'll be twenty years, and--"

"Twenty wonderful years, honey. You're always supposed to include the adjective."

Another forced laugh. "Sorry, you're right. Twenty wonderful years."

He paused. "I know that we're planning to renew our wedding vows that day."

A small edge to Rissa's voice. "Yes?"

"Nothing. No, forget I said anything. It has been a wonderful twenty years, hasn't it?"

Keith could just make out her face in the darkness. She nodded, then looked at him, meeting his eyes, trying to see beyond them, see the truth, see what was bothering him.

And then it came to her, and she rolled onto her side, facing away from him. "It's okay," she said at last.

"What is?"

And she spoke the final words that passed between them that night.

"It's okay," she said, "if you don't want to say, 'for as long as we both shall live.""

Keith sat at his workstation on the bridge. Holograms of three humans and a dolphin hovered above the station's rim.

In his peripheral vision, he was aware of one of the bridge doors opening and Jag waddling in. The Waldahud didn't go to his own workstation, though. Instead he stood in front of Keith's and waited, in what seemed a state of some agitation, while Keith finished the conference he was conducting with the holographic heads. When they'd logged off, Keith looked up at Jag.

"As you know, the darmats have been moving," said Jag.

"I'm frankly surprised at their agility. They seem to work together, each sphere playing off its own gravitational and repulsive forces against the others to move the whole community cooperatively. Anyway, in doing so, they've completely reconfigured themselves, so that individual darmats that we couldn't clearly observe before are now at the periphery of the assemblage. I've made some predictions about which darmat might next reproduce, and I'd like to test my theory. For that, I want you to move Starplex to the far side of the dark-matter field."

"PHANTOM, schematic local space," said Keith.

A holographic representation appeared in midair between Keith and Jag.

The darmats had moved around to the opposite side of the green star, so that Starplex, the shortcut, the star, and the darmat community were pretty much arranged in a straight line.

"If we move to the far side of the darmat field, we'll be out Of view of the shortcut," said Keith. "We might miss seeing a watson come through.

Can't you just put a probe there?"

"My prediction is based on very minute mass concentrations.

I need to use either our deck-one or deck-seventy hyperscope to make my observations."

Keith considered. "All right." He tapped a key on his console and the usual holograms of Thor and Rhombus popped into being. "Rhombus, please check with everyone who is currently doing external scanning.

Find out when the soonest we can move the ship without interrupting their work will be. Thor, at that time take us to the opposite side of the dark-matter field, positioning us at coordinates Jag will supply you with."

"Serving is the greatest pleasure," said Rhombus.

"Bob's your uncle," said Thor.

Jag moved his head up and down, imitating the human gesture.

Waldahudin never said thank you, but Keith thought the pig looked inordinately pleased.

The bridge was calm, the six workstations floating serenely against the holographic night. It was 0500 ship's time; delta shift was in the final hour of its watch.

In the director's position was an Ib named Wineglass; other Ibs were at the Internal-Ops and Helm stations.

Physical sciences was slaved to a dolphin named Melon-dent, a Waldahud was at life sciences, and a human named Denna Van Hausen was at External Ops.

A grid of force screens radiated down from the invisible ceiling, creating millimeter-wide vacuum gaps between each workstation, preventing transmission of noise between them. The Ib at Internal Ops was engaged in a holographic conference with three miniature floating Ibs and three disembodied Waldahud heads. The human at External was reading a novel on one of her monitor screens.

Suddenly, the silencing force fields snapped off and an alarm began to sound. "Unidentified ship approaching," announced PHANTOM.

"T'here!" said Van Hausen, pointing to the image of the nearby star.

"It's just passing from behind the photosphere."

PHANTOM was showing the unknown ship as a small red triangle; the actual vessel was far too small to be visible at this distance.

"Any chance that it's just a watson?" asked Wineglass, his British accent carrying a hint of Cockney.

"None," said Van Hausen. "It's at least as big as one of our probeships."

Lights moved across Wineglass's web. "Let's get a look at it," he said.

The Ib at the helm station rotated the ship slightly so that the deck-seventy optical array was aimed at the 'intruder. A square frame appeared around part of the star, and within it a magnified view appeared. The approaching ship was illuminated on one side by the green star. The other side was a black silhouette, visible only because it eclipsed the background stars.

Wineglass spoke to Kreet, the Waldahud on his right. 'What looks like a Waldahud design. The central engine pod, no?"

Waldahudin believed each ship--or building or vehicle--should be unique; they did not mass-produce from the same design. Kreet lifted all four of his shoulders. "Maybe," be said.

"Any transponder signal, Denna?" asked Wineglass.

"If there is one," the human said, "it's lost in the noise from the star."

"Please try to contact the ship."

"Transmitting," said Denna. "But they're still over fifty million klicks away; it'll take almost six minutes for any reply, and--God!"

A second ship was coming around the limb of the green star. It was similar in size to the first, but had a different, more blocky design.

Still, the trademark Waldahud central engine pod was visible.

"Better get Keith down here," said Wineglass.

Lights rippled across the Ib at InOps. "Director Lansing to the bridge!"

"Fry to contact the second ship, too," Wineglass said.

"Doing so," said Van Hausen.. "And--Jesus, I'll try to contact that third one, as well." Another ship, half emerald fire glinting off polished metal, half black nothingness, was emerging from behind the star. A moment later a fourth and then a fifth appeared.

"It's a bloody armada," said Van Hausen.

"They Waldahud ships clearly are," said Melondent from his open pool to the left of the physics workstation.

"Thruster exhaust signatures most characteristic."

"But what would five--six, eight--eight Waldahud craft want here?"

asked Wineglass. "Denna, where are they heading?"

"They're doing parabolic paths around the star," the human woman said.

"Hard to say exactly where they're planning to end up, but Starplex's current position is within eight degrees of the most likely projected course."

"They after us are coming," said Melondent. "We should--"

A door appeared in the hologram. Keith Lansing strode onto the bridge, unshaven, hair matted down from sleep.

"Sorry to wake you early," said Wineglass, rolling away from the director's workstation, "but we have company."

Keith nodded at the Ib, and waited for a pOlychair to emerge from the trapdoor in front of his console. It was already morphing into human configuration as it rose up from the floor. Keith seated himself.

"You've tried contacting them?"

"Yes," said Denna. "Earliest possible response is in forty-eight seconds, though."

"They're Waldahud ships, aren't they?" said Keith, his workstation rising to the height he preferred.

"Very likely so," said Wineglass, "although, of course, Waldahud ships are sold all over the Commonwealth. They could be crewed by somebody else."

Keith rubbed sleep from his eyes. "How did so many ships arrive without our knowing it?"

"They must have emerged one at a time from the shortcut while it was shielded from our view by the green star," Wineglass said.

"Christ, of course," said Keith. He consulted the readout of who was operating which station. "Double-Dot, get Jag down here."

The Ib at Internal Ops slapped his control panel with ropes, then, a moment later, said, "Jag has his communications routed to a voice mailbox. It's his normal sleep period."

"Override," said Keith. "Get him down here right now.

Denna, any reply to our messages?"

"Nothing."

Keith glanced up at the glowing digital clocks floating against the starfield. "It's almost shift change anyway," he said. "Let's get the full alpha-shift staff down here."

"Alpha shift, report immediately to the bridge," said Double-Dot.

"Lianne Karendaughter, Thoraid Magnor, Rhombus, Jag, and Clatissa Cervantes to the bridge, please."

"Thank you," said Keith. "Denna, open a channel to all the approaching ships."

"This is G. K. Lansing, Director of the Commonwealth research vessel Starplex. State your business, please."