Sunborn (20 page)

     <<< I will try. >>>

*

   
It was the strangest thing Delilah had ever encountered, and she scarcely knew what to make of it. As a fractal being, and kin of the shadow-people, she sometimes thought of matter-life as a kind of flat projection—intelligent, to be sure, and fully sentient, but frustratingly limited. But the matter-life on this ship seemed capable of far more interactions outside of their dimensions than Delilah would have imagined.

    She had helped a little, adjusting the fields just so, to make a stronger connection with the spacetime disturbance known as Deep. The matter-life called Antares had not asked, but it was clear she wanted to make contact. And without taking risks, how could they learn anything?

    The risk had paid off, with powerful emotional crosscurrents. But the reappearance of the quarx in the Bandicut had made it all blossom, maybe too fast. Now both the Antares and the Bandicut lay motionless, in states that left the other matter-life in dismay. Delilah, looking closely, could see that they were not dead or dying—and that they remained, in some fashion, in contact with Deep.

    Delilah was uncertain what to do. She was supposed to help, and she certainly wanted to do no harm. Perhaps it would be best if she just closed off that spacetime channel, and let the connection fade.

*

   
“John Bandicut! John Bandicut! Can you hear me?”

    That was Ik’s voice. Bandicut’s return to awareness was accompanied by a shuddering sensation. Was it the ship, in trouble? He blinked his eyes open painfully. Ik was bent over him, fingers digging urgently into his arms, shaking him. A halo was encircling him with a pulsing light, chiming.

    Bandicut’s mind soared out, looking for Charlie, then sprang back to make sense of Ik. “Stop shaking me!” he croaked.

    “Hrahh, you are all right?” Ik breathed, letting him go.

    Wincing, Bandicut pushed himself up to a sitting position. The halo seemed to take this as a cue, and rose back toward the ceiling, its sound dying away. Bandicut closed his eyes and took a deep breath. /Charlie? Are you there?/

    In response, he heard a sound like something sliding quickly down a wire. And then:

   
/// My God. ///

   
The quarx was struggling to reestablish itself in its quarters. /Are you hurt? Did you touch Deep, did you touch that thing out there?/ Bandicut asked, trying to be still enough to let the quarx recover.

   
/// I don’t...yes. Yes, I touched it.

   
But I don’t—///

   
The quarx hesitated.

   
/// It was as if I touched a part of myself.

   
Except it wasn’t. ///

   
/Part of yourself?/ Bandicut asked, puzzled. But before he could pursue the question, he saw Antares sitting up. He reached over and touched her arm, and felt in her gaze a kind of shell-shocked wonder.

   
“John Bandicut,” she whispered. “I felt something astonishing. It was as though I felt...” She seemed unable to finish her sentence, but her eyes would not release him.

    Bandicut felt a burning in his eyes. “Was it Charlie?”

    Ik’s bony, bluish face appeared beside them both. “My friends—”

    Antares sighed with a whistle. “Thank you, Ik. I am shaken. But unharmed. John Bandicut—?”

    Letting his own breath out slowly, Bandicut said, “It was very strange.” He put a hand to his temple. “I have a new Charlie now.”

   
/// Charli. ///

   
He blinked, startled—but nodded to himself.

    Antares looked at him with a wide gaze. “Then was that what I felt?”

    “I don’t think so. Because my new...Charli...encountered something, someone.” He held out his hands. “Can you feel?”

   
Antares touched his wrist, then his forehead. “Uhhl, indeed yes! I sense your new quarx! But I do not think this is the one I met.”

    “No.”

    “Then—”

    /Can you explain it, Charli?/

    The quarx seemed uncertain.

   
/// It was like an echo.

   
An echo of the one I used to be. ///

   
Bandicut hesitated, then relayed the words to Antares.

    Antares touched her temple, as though trying to find her own memory. “Strange, that is what I felt, also. As if Charlene had become
imprinted
 on Deep, so that a part of her remained, even after death.”

    Sitting back, Bandicut glanced up at Ik and Li-Jared and Jeaves. “Are you following any of this?”

    Ik and Li-Jared looked uncertain. Jeaves answered by asking, “Were you able to make any contact with Deep?”

    Antares stirred. “I could
sense
 Deep, and I felt an empathy, and I think a desire to help. But more than that—no.”

    Bandicut squinted in concentration as Charli spoke to him, then said, “Charli tells me she did make contact, through Charlene.”

   
/// I would prefer to say, Charlene-echo. ///

   
“Charlene-echo,” Bandicut corrected, his voice faltering a little. “Charlene is gone. But some part of her remains, and it can apparently function as a go-between.”

    “And did Deep say anything meaningful to us, through Charlene-echo?” Li-Jared asked impatiently.

    Bandicut focused inward again. “Yes,” he said. “Deep has changed course. He is now headed for the star we noticed earlier. That is
*
Brightburn
*
. That’s where we need to go.”

Chapter 13

Approaching the Star

JEAVES PROCEDURAL DIARY: 384.14.9.4

Another day or two in transit, following Deep, should bring us to the star we called *Brightburn*. During that time, the company must prepare for contact with the star. None of us really knows how to prepare for contact with a star, of course, though I have more information than the rest, having once experienced communication with a star. I know this: spacetime itself must be stressed for such a contact to work. For that reason, I hope Deep will be able to help us.

   
Another matter on the minds of the company is what they can expect from The Long View, should we confront another adversary device without Deep to defend us. They reasonably suspect that conversation alone may be insufficient, and we may desire to wield more persuasive power. I do regret the Shipworld mission designer’s decision to limit our fighting options. Not that we would choose to undertake combat; indeed, none of us is trained for it. Nonetheless, I sensed the company’s palpable dismay upon learning of our lack of weapons, even for self-defense. They were scarcely reassured by the protection of our n-space generators.

   
Clearly they are uncomfortable with the mission being controlled by the shipboard AI, which they don’t trust, and by Delilah and me, whom they trust little more. They feel undervalued—despite the explicit value we place on their experience in solving difficult, world-threatening problems. I have no doubt, as their knowledge grows, so will their ability to take control of the mission.

   
How can I persuade them of this? Even after my own travels up and down the timestream, and personal glimpses of some of the terrible events I showed them (I spoke of persuasive evidence, but did not mention that I glimpsed some of the events as an eyewitness)—even after all that, I barely feel that I have the necessary knowledge. For the sake of crew confidence, I have tried to act as if I have a clear grasp; but the truth is, I am far from understanding these matters in their entirety.

   
My relations with the crew concern me most of all. The transmission of my personality components to the waystation was not altogether error-free, and I worry that my personal relations capabilities may be incomplete. How have I been performing as de facto commander of the ship? Do I need to relearn how to work with humans and their friends?

   
If so, I had better learn quickly.

*

    Bandicut, while trying to get to know Charli, was still shakily absorbing the revelation that there were now
two
quarx in existence. Maybe one was only an echo of the real Charlene, an imprint on Deep’s mind. But echo or imprint or
whatever
she was, she was still out there, still communicating and—he guessed—thinking. Was she still
feeling
? Could an echo feel? His robots seemed to feel, and who knew about Jeaves? If AIs could, why not an imprint of a quarx? Was this Charlene-echo still capable of grief, and hope, and caring? Was her
soul
 still there? He brooded a long time on these questions.

   
The new quarx felt very much like Charlene in her personable nature and sharp intelligence, and different in other ways. She seemed at times timid, and yet almost aggressively curious, exploring memories and deeper matters. The way she’d launched herself out to encounter Deep, barely minutes after coming shyly into the world—how soon would she do something like that again? Afterward, she’d seemed concerned for the alarm she’d caused him. She spent a long time perusing his memories. He had a feeling something was happening back there in the library stacks of his mind, but she couldn’t tell him what it was. She was extremely interested in the subject of the galactic war survivors, though; maybe she was searching for clues.

   
That night, Antares reached out to him with quiet urgency. She wanted to draw close to him, to make love; he could feel it as clearly as his own desires. But—unsettlingly—she also wanted to seek out and touch the new quarx. For a while, he felt weirdly left out of the exchange as Antares probed,
through
him, at Charli’s feelings and thoughts. Even as she enveloped him both physically and emotionally, he could feel the intense mutual touching of Thespi and quarx. He felt a twinge of jealousy as the two explored each other. Antares at last responded to his need and drew him closer, bringing him to a pitch of arousal. As he climaxed, shuddering, he was aware of the quarx watching with keen interest. Afterward, he folded his arms around Antares and hugged her close, feeling satisfied and embarrassed all at once.

    The quarx was quiet for a time, before murmuring,

   
/// That was...extremely moving.

   
If that is a normal part of your

   
relationship with your friend...///

   
/What?/

   
/// I have much to think about. ///

   
Bandicut grunted wordlessly.

    Sleep that night brought dreams of a different sort. Charli was all tangled up in his thoughts, and seemed to speak to him as he slept, and he spoke back to her, only half aware. They talked of lives, and loves, and relationships lost in time, and finally of Deep. Charli hoped that if she could engage in further dialogue with the Charlene-echo, she might be able to open up a comprehensible dialogue with Deep.

    If you think you can, he murmured in his sleep. But Deep is a long way away now.

    He’ll be back, she seemed to say. He’ll be back.

*

   
Li-Jared couldn’t make himself relax. He slipped out of his quarters after an unsuccessful attempt at sleep. Damn it, he thought—the others seemed able to take these bizarre events in stride, but he just couldn’t. It was crazy, what was happening: John Bandicut and Antares keeling over every time they encountered that damn cloud; Jeaves and the ship’s AI making decisions that left the rest of them completely out of control.
By the blazing heavens,
we
should be in charge of this mission, not some faceless AI!

   
Li-Jared understood that there was a danger they had to face, and that worlds might be at stake. He could accept that. But in no way did that excuse the way they were being pushed around. Hadn’t they managed to make their own decisions during several major crises, and hadn’t that worked out? If they were going to put their lives in jeopardy, why couldn’t they be given the authority they needed?

    And now—without anyone asking his opinion—they were detouring to talk to a
star
?

    It was infuriating. It was not that he objected in principle to communicating with a star—far from it, if such a thing were
possible,
and
comprehensible,
and if anyone had included him in the decision-making. But this was all about control. The AIs were controlling
him,
 and it should be the other way around. And as far as he could tell, his companions were simply going along with it.

    Well, he wasn’t.

    Li-Jared paced back and forth in the corridor for a few minutes, then looked in on Ik, because if anybody would listen to him, it was Ik. But Ik was sitting perfectly still on his round sleep pad, deep in meditation, the nearest he ever came to sleep as Li-Jared knew it. Rubbing his chest in frustration, Li-Jared stepped back into the corridor. He wasn’t even going to try Bandicut and Antares, because if they weren’t busy mating like Karellian lemitars, then it was probably only because Bandicut was in silence-fugue or maybe trying not to go crazy again with a new quarx in his head. No, no point in going there; for now at least, Li-Jared was on his own.