Galactic Center - Furious Gulf Part 2

Killeen shook his head slowly, obviously consulting an Aspect. "Must be. Records are poor, though."

"Somebody must have Aspects from that far back."

"None from this sector, so close to True Center."

Toby knew that Aspects got hazy and scratchy with age. Chandelier Aspects had to have interpretation programs added, to understand them at all. And it wasn't just the s.h.i.+fts in language. The hardest things to convey were the concepts. n.o.body could really comprehend how the Chandelier folk thought. "If we could get some idea--"

Killeen shook his head. "Humans were spread all over, back then.

This Chandelier, it looks pretty d.a.m.n fine all right, but it might have been just a minor outpost, for all we know."

"Huh? But it's, it's beautiful."

Killeen grinned. "Suresay--to us. Maybe it was nothing special to people from the Great Times."

Toby looked skeptical and Killeen waved at the screens, where wonders unfolded. "Look, once people retreated from their Chandeliers, they went down to live on planets again. Things got rough. We stopped building big, and settled for what we could protect from mechs. The 34.Family of Families spread out among the stars, looking for safe places to hide.""That was the Hunker Down, right?""The beginning of it. They figured to hide out on planets. Thoughtmechs wouldn't have much use for them.""Because mechs live best in s.p.a.ce?"Killeen grimaced wryly. "So they thought. On Snowglade and Trump, we first built the Grand Arcologies--cities like little Chandeliers, but smaller because of the gravity. The d.a.m.n mechs smashed them. Our tech stuff got worse and we built the Low Arcologies. Still pretty d.a.m.n bigplaces, mind you. I saw the ruins of one.""You told me. Big as a mountain.""Well, maybe a little smaller. Too big for the mechs, though. They got through our defenses and flattened the little arcologies, too, eventually."The ancient anger in Killeen's voice made Toby say in sympathy, "So we built the Citadels. Kept going.""Yeasay--and kept 'em well hid, so we thought. Had to live by raidin'

off the new mech manufacturing complexes. Then the mech city-minds sent rat-catchers to blast each Family's Citadel. Rooting people out, casting them to the winds. Till only Citadel Bishop was left. Then came our turn--remember?"Toby recalled with reluctance their flight from Citadel Bishop. He had been just a boy, confused, scared. Fire and smoke and death. His mother, killed by the mechs with merciful, cold swiftness.He shook himself. "Look, Cermo said to report to you."Killeen nodded silently. Toby could tell that he, too, had trouble shaking off the dark past. Killeen abruptly turned and sat behind hisbroad, uncluttered desk. "I think you've been getting out of hand."

"Oh, the sail-snake thing? Look, it wasn't my idea.""You should not get Quath stirred up. She is unpredictable."

"Quath carried me out there. There was nothing I could do."

"You could've signaled us, told us what was going on."

Toby shrugged. "I didn't think of that.""When you get in trouble, consult your Aspects.""Didn't think of that either.""You're carrying a lot of experience in those Aspects. Let them help you.""They nag me a lot."Killeen smiled. "That goes with the deal. They don't get to do anything except talk, remember. Imagine what that's like.""I'd rather not," Toby said, uneasy at how this conversation was turning."You've got to get used to working with them. Fluid. So you reach for them automaticall like scratching yourself.""They don't ride so easy yet," Toby admitted uncomfortably.

35.

Killeen gazed steadily at him for a long moment that widened between them. "How... how is she?"

So it had finally come out. Again.

"The same.., of course."

K'.

flleen s lost love, s.h.i.+bo. The woman who had come into Killeen's life after Toby's mother died, a woman Toby had come to accept as nearly a replacement mother. The once-vibrant s.h.i.+bo now existed only as an Aspect carried in Toby.

She had been killed on Trump, cut down by enemy fire. In a trap set by His Supremacy, a mech-human hybrid. Toby and Killeen had managed to get her back to Argo. In the recording room the s.h.i.+p's instruments had spoken of pota.s.sium levels and neurological amalgams and digital matching matrices, terms n.o.body in Family Bishop understood. Or their Aspects.

The ancient instruments had saved as much as they could of s.h.i.+bo, reading the neural beds of her mind, the shape of a unique consciousness.

Making a recording. Then squeezing it into a chip that slid easily into a human spinal reader. Together with cell samples from her body, for long-term Family genetic records, Toby's s.h.i.+bo Aspect was all that remained of her.

Normally an Aspect lay dormant until the trauma of death pa.s.sed, often for a Family generation. But the Family needed s.h.i.+bo's skills, judgment, and lore. Killeen could not have carried her Aspect, of course; that would invite emotional disaster in their Cap'n, violating every Family precept.

Toby had been the only crew member with an open spinal slot and the right personality constellations to accept s.h.i.+bo immediately. They had used her knowledge of s.h.i.+p's systems innumerable times in the long voyage. s.h.i.+bo had a knack for techno-craft. Even better than the advice of the older Aspects from the Low Arcology Era.

But the toll on Killeen had been heavy. Another long silence pa.s.sed between the two of them, until Toby felt like jumping up and rus.h.i.+ng out, away, free of the strain he had truly not wished to carry. "I... "Killeen hesitated. "Can I speak with her?"

"I don't think so, Dad."

Killeen opened his mouth, then closed it so abruptly Toby could hear the teeth click. "I just wanted a few words."

"I think it's a bad idea."

"Why?"

"You know how you get."

"I just wanted a little--"

"Dad, you've got to let go of her."

There was a desperate look in Killeen's eyes. "I have. I have."

"No you haven't. If you had, you wouldn't ask."

His father's lips thinned until they were nearly white. Toby knew4".

36.

Killeen was holding in a lot, the pressures of leaders.h.i.+p on top of everything else. But he couldn't give ground on this point.

He had, once. Killeen had hounded him to let his s.h.i.+bo Aspect speak through his mouth, and he had. Once. Twice. Then again and again, until Killeen wanted that contact, as miserably fleeting and thin as it was, every day.

"I suppose you're some kind of expert?" Killeen asked curtly.

"On this, yes."

"What's your Family Counselor been telling you?"

"Just what I said. To not manifest s.h.i.+bo for you."

Killeen slammed his fist onto his desk top with a meaty smack. "And if I make it an order?"

"I can't obey that kind of order."

I'll be the judge of that." Killeen's lips twisted cruelly.

Toby took a deep breath and said as evenly as he could, "No you won't. I'll take it to a Family Gathering."

Killeen's face slowly lost its congested, tormented look. It went slack, pale, beaten--an expression Toby liked even less.

"You... you'd do that." It was not a question.

"I'd have to." His mouth was dry, sour. "If I manifested s.h.i.+bo, it'd drive you nutso, same as before."

"Just ... just a little ..." Killeen's mouth trembled. His jaw worked with unspoken emotion. Toby hated watching tormented devotion drive a man he loved to such humiliation. It was as though Killeen was addicted to some terrible drug, and could never get it out of his system.

But he had to. And Toby had to help him. "No. No, Dad."

"You could, just for a--"

"A little's worse than a lot. You know that."

Killeen stared across the bare table for a long time and then slowly nodded. "Yeasay... Worse than a lot."

"Dad, I use s.h.i.+bo's talents every day. She knows the electronics of this s.h.i.+p, how systems interact--she was great. But that's not what you want from her. You loved s.h.i.+bo the woman. She's gone. What's left is hollow, thin. Only an Aspect."

Killeen's cheeks were sunken, his eyes empty. "Not quite."

"Huh?"

"The recording machines made a deep copy of her. That chip you're carrying, it's a Personality."

"What?" Toby was stunned. A Personality was a full embodiment of the neural beds. It carried features of the original person that went far beyond his or her skills and knowledge.

"I ordered that n.o.body tell you." Killeen shrugged ruefully. "A boy your age can't really handle a Personality."

"But... but it feels like an Aspect."

"I had them box in the Personality. At first it couldn't express itself fully through you."

37."That's... I never heard of..."

"It's rare. For emergencies only."

"But why?"Killeen was getting some of his Cap'n face back. "Family policy is to save as much of a person as we can.""But there are limits. I mean, we don't keep bodies, or, or...""I wanted it done.""You wanted it done. Great! What about me?""The blocks should hold for a while, then give way. Her full Personality will emerge in time.""But suppose something goes wrong? Suppose this s.h.i.+bo Personality starts making trouble?"Toby felt jittery apprehension. Even Aspects could sometimes gang up on their carrier. Attacking at a weak moment, they could bring on an Aspect storm. Then the carrier person went into traumatic states, a form of induced mental illness. Once the Aspects got control of a carrier, they could direct movement and speech, govern behavior. Sometimes Aspectscould ride a person for days, even years, without anyone else knowing.

And a Personality was stronger than an Aspect..."I took precautions. Her Personality is tied down with interlocking protections.""Still, Dad, if it ever--""This is s.h.i.+bo we're talking about here!" He slammed the desk again.

"She wouldn't turn on you, and you know that. She loved you like a son.""This thing I'm carrying, it's a version of s.h.i.+bo. Complete with death trauma."Killeen blinked. "What do you mean?"Toby fidgeted awkwardly. "Death changes people." For a moment he almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of this. Death changes people. But were they people at all anymore? Or just damaged, altered recordings?Another stretching silence between them. Then Killeen said stiffly, "I should have told you before."So his father was putting on his Cap'n self, covering his feelings with a uniform. Toby saw that this last statement was as close as he was going to get to an apology.Toby made a half-shrug, his mind still a swirl of conflicting feelings.

"I'd just have worried about it.""So I thought, too. Son, I'm... I'm sorry about asking you to manifesther. I know it's wrong."

"Okay, Dad."

"Sorry. So sorry."Toby got up, still fl.u.s.tered. His father came around the desk and embraced him. Neither of them were best at expressing things through words, and for a long time they simply clung to each other, arms carrying messages that voices could not.

4.

Pale Immensities Toby watched the Chandelier expand before their flyer, already huge and ominous, and yet still coming, swelling, filling all of s.p.a.ce. Its pale immensities stretched in all directions, offering glittering flanks and towers, grand portals and jutting spires, soaring perspectives leading the eye away into dizzying depths.--People made this?--he sent on the comm line.Killeen answered grimly,--We were once far greater.--The Cap'n was in the same flyer. Since they had talked, his father seemed to want to have Toby nearby whenever possible. Cermo piloted, since this was the Command flyer. It was not lost to Toby that a.s.signing him here effectively put him on ice, kept him from "stirring around," as Cermo had described his excursion with Quath. On the other hand, this flyer would be in on the most interesting discoveries.The ramparts and great flanks of the Chandelier began to betray their age as the Family flyers coasted nearer. The ma.s.sive sheets that seemed to have a ceramic hardness now showed pits, black scars, big rimmed craters.

About Galactic Center a hail of incoming debris constantly circled. Even tiny flakes, zooming in at several hundred kilometers per second, could dig deep holes.Toby watched the peppered face gain detail as they came nearer. He had the same problem, blotches that robbed dignity, but supposedly his would clear up in time. A teenage problem. It was as though age brought a cosmic acne here, he mused, that would never go away. But did that mean no one lived here now?They were close. He could sense an edgy impatience on the comm line. The crew sent their all-clears in clipped tones. n.o.body detected the slightest signal coming from the Chandelier itself.He used his blocked-in s.h.i.+bo Personality to help integrate the calls. It 39.was pleasant, having a kind of interior servant who could listen to one transmission while Toby paid attention to another.Quath could do that, all by herself, Toby knew. The alien's mind was organized differently, so that it processed incoming information in parallel.

Quath said that she had "subminds." They did their a.s.signed jobs, kind of the way Toby could gnaw an apple and read a book at the same time. But Quath's subminds stored it all and could feed it back.So Quath would have been perfect for this job--only she wouldn't come along. the big alien had sent.Killeen had explained that this Chandelier was not in any sense Family Bishop's home, since it was incredibly ancient. Still Quath wouldn't budge. She sent something about "intimate observances" and would say no more.Toby's s.h.i.+bo Personality emerged, a tickling presence.

All fiyers are in optimal position, the 3D scan shows. No unexplained electromagnetic emissions. The Chandelier appears dead.

Toby was used to s.h.i.+bo giving him straight, impersonal stuff. She had been a good friend while alive, but her Personality was reserved. She had not mentioned his conversation with Killeen, either. He said to her in his mind, "Say, do you think this is a good idea?"

Not particularly. Mechs probably expect such a magnificent siteto be visited now and then. And mechs plan far ahead.

"What would you do?"

Send in one person. Less risk.

"Ummm, sounds reasonable. Not our style, though."

Family Bishop has always been impetuous. Perhaps that is why you have survived.

Toby remembered that s.h.i.+bo had come to them from Family Knight, after that Family had been nearly killed off by the mechs. She had been born into Family p.a.w.n. "Well, I've always wanted to see a Chandelier. I s'pose we all do."

Mechs know that, too. But I suspect your father has motives beyond curiosity.

"Such as?"

40.

Only a guess. We shall see.

This calm, mysterious distance was typical s.h.i.+bo. Most Aspects were eager to speak, to be involved again in real-world hustle and bustle. s.h.i.+bo had a serenity not shared by Isaac and the others. Maybe that was an attribute of Personalities in general, but Toby suspected it was just a deep feature of the remarkable woman she had been. Though his true mother was still a firm, resonant memory, s.h.i.+bo had been a mother to him in the long years of Family wanderings.

Toby shrugged and reported that the flyers were positioned, swarming like bees around an elephant.

Killeen nodded curtly and ordered,--Teams in!- Flyers all around the Chandelier angled in. There was no visible movement in response.

The flyers slipped into open entrances. Toby sorted out the transmissions and brought the most important to Killeen's attention. There was continual cross talk. Bishops were a gabby lot: --Looks like a big open auditorium here. Some burn damage.--Yeah, must've been fighting all along this pa.s.sage. Big gouges out of the walls.----A whole section smashed in here.----All in vacuum. No air pressure.-- --Burned-out living quarters. From the door heights I'd say they were short people.-- --No signs of recent use, I'd say.-- --Right. I just ran a sample on some burned furniture in an apartment.

My Aspect says that the isotope dating makes this to be old--twenty thousand years, at least.-- --Anybody find any records?-- --No. Somebody sure sc.r.a.ped this place clean.-- --I'm picking up traces of electrical activity. Something still works here.-- Ki]]een broke i'L curtly.--Proceed carefully. There may be mechs in there.- Toby didn't think it likely that mechs would stay in a human artifact, even a glorious ruin like this. But then, he had less experience than his father and the other Bishop veterans. He knew the long history of betrayals, of agreements broken, of ambushes and raids and casual obliteration as just that--history. These men and women had lived through plenty of it; some were over a hundred years old and still fighting, still vigorous and adamant about giving any margin to mechs.

--G.o.d, they fought all through here.-- --Yeah, smashed. Stripped clean.-- --Somebody pulled out all the metals. Looks like mech scavenging.

Same typical grappler marks.-- --A graveyard of a city.-- 41.--They clean stripped it. Like Blaine Arcology back on Snowglade, 'member?-Toby remembered, all right. He had hiked there, taking two days, on his first major outing with Killeen and his grandfather, Abraham. Blaine Arcology was a reverential place for Bishops, worth a half-day detour from their target, a mech factory that housed usable foodstuffs. The colossal ruin had awed Toby. They had camped there overnight, even though Abraham grumbled about the danger of mech ambush. He had wandered the smashed streets, reading hints of former lives among the shadows. The Arcology had seemed to him a place of privacy, silence, s.p.a.ce, and of memories forever lost. Memories of busy avenues and neighbors, of long afternoons with time to waste, of barefoot fun and whispery elegance--a city. He had tried to say as much to Killeen and Abraham, and while Toby talked about the majesty of the place both the men had looked away, faces pinched and brooding. When Toby had asked why, Abraham had said sadly that an old Aspect of his had just reminded him that Blaine was really not an example of the High Arcology Era at all. It had served as a kind of refugee camp, after the truly great places had been smashed. And Killeen had nodded, too.A refugee camp. Yet Citadel Bishop would have fit in its sports stadium.That moment long ago came back to Toby. Then it was blown away, the way the wind carries conversations and shreds them.--There's everything here. Concert halls, markets, factories, hospitals, huge shafts for elevators.----And blasted parks. Musta been pretty once.----Wait a sec, there's an airlock here.--Killeen sent,--Test it for activity.----Nothing electrical I can pick up.----Try the seals.--Killeen said.--They seem okay. Intact.--Killeen sent,--Leave a robot mechanical at the controls and standback, far back. Then pop the seal.----Yeasay, doing it... --Other reports came in, of more damaged vistas. Toby listened intently, filtering out the repet.i.tious reports. His attention focused on the team atthe airlock. He ached to be in there with them, looking around.--We opened the lock. It's cycling.--Killeen sent,--What's the gas?----Ordinary air. Chem-sensors say it's okay, not poisoned.--Cermo scowled next to Toby.--Air's still good after all this time?-Toby said--Maybe the air system still works.----And maybe other things work, too,--Killeen said uneasily.

From the airlock team came,--Seems all right. Cap'n, can we go in?--Killeen sent,--Yeasay. But take it slow.-- 42.

Cermo said,--Cap'n, there are only three in that team. They can't help but get spread out.----Right.--Killeen hesitated only a second.--But we don't have any reserves. You go, Cermo. Provide comm to us.-Toby said,--Dad, I'll do that. I can monitor just as well while I'm moving.--Killeen shook his head. To Toby's surprise, Cermo put in,--He'll be all right with me. I could use the help.-Toby realized that Cermo might be trying to defuse the tension between the two of them, by getting Toby out from under his father's thumb.

Maybe his father wanted that, too, because Killeen looked relieved.--Um.

Very well.--Quickly the Cap'n turned his attention to other matters.Into the Chandelier, Toby's pulse quickening. They followed tracers that pulsed on the inner visors of their helmets. Already Argo's computers had built up a rough three-dimensional map of this vast derelict, using the exploration team's data. They guided Cermo and Toby through dark lanes, down shafts, through the wrecked corridors of far antiquity. They sped through utter blackness, guided by their helmet beams.Toby caught glimpses of tattered clothing, trashed factories, gutted offices. Each glance was a momentary message of beleaguered lives lost for millennia, known now only by pathetic sc.r.a.ps.They reached the yawning round airlock. Their helmet beams showed a crewwoman, who waved them on in.--Can you believe it?-- she sent.-There was air inside. When we opened the lock, it near blew me away.-The blackness all around them gave way to a broad, phosphor-lit square. The team was there, working among ranks of machinery. Cermo gave orders for them to search the area. Toby stood, listening to otherteams report their findings. They had found nothing as unusual as this.

e Toby asked Cermo,--Why you figure the phosphors work here andnowhere else?----Maybe there's still a power source in here.----After twenty thousand years?--Somebody guffawed.But there was. A crewman found electricity coursing through conduits high above. Cermo said,--No bodies, so far?----n.o.body's reported any.--Toby answered.--They're gone, I guess.