Текст книги "Dark Ararat"

Автор книги: Brian Stableford

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That, Matthew guessed—in spite of Konstantin Milyukov’s assurance that guesswork would not be enough—was why everybody kept telling him that things were not as simple as he had been ready to assume, and why an armed guard had been stationed outside his room, and why the people in the corridor had acted so quickly to ensure that no one could pollute his mind before the captain had briefed him. Perhaps it also accounted for the fact that the ship seemed to be in such a poor state of repair. Shen and his “gang of saboteurs” were not merely in hiding. They were in active opposition. If the shooting had not already started, it soon would—unless a compromise could be attained, and a treaty made.

Matthew felt a sudden wave of despair sweep through his weakened body. Hopehad been intended to escape all of the curses that had brought Earth to the brink of destruction, not to reproduce them with further savage twists. What hope could there possibly be for the future of humankind, if Hopeitself were now embroiled by an orgy of internal strife that could very easily lead to the mutual destruction of all involved? Even Gaea had proved so fragile as to have avoided destruction by a fluke; the ecosphere-in-miniature that was her pale shadow here could not tolerate a similar strain.

Vince Solari must have been mulling over the same awkward possibilities and dire anxieties, but his approach was as practical as ever. “So who, exactly, am I supposed to be working for now?” the policeman demanded. “You?” His voice was not disdainful, but it was certainly skeptical.

“For the human race,” Captain Milyukov told him, without a trace of irony. “For the truth. For justice. For all the future generations whose fate will depend on what wecan accomplish in the years to come.”

“In other words, for you,” Solari repeated, making no attempt to keep his own voice free of sarcasm.

“No,” Milyukov said, making the contradiction seem effortless although his manner was still aggressively insistent. “I am the captain of Hope. My responsibility begins and ends in the microworld. Yourfuture will be spent on the surface, within whatever society is eventually established there. If your people want to make Shen Chin Che—or anyone else—the owner of the planet, or the emperor of its human colony, that is entirely their affair. If your people want to design and implement their own political system, they are entirely free to do so. But they must realize and accept that we have the same right, and that we will exercise it. Hopedoes not belong to the colonists, and they have no power of command over her.

“It would obviously be best for everyone if your people and mine could work together, in full agreement as to our goals, our methods and our timetable—but if we cannot agree by mutual consent, agreement will certainly not be coerced by Shen Chin Che or anyone else. If we cannot agree, then we shall have to be content to disagree. When I say that you are working for the human race, for truth, for justice and for future generations, I mean exactly what I say. Perhaps such formulations seem vague or pompous to you—I cannot pretend to understand how the men of the distant past reacted to ideas and situations—but they are taken very seriously aboard Hope.”

Vince Solari looked sideways at Matthew. The policeman did not know how to react to this strangely strident declaration, and Matthew could not blame him.

“When Hopewas under construction,” Matthew said, treading very carefully, “the assumption was that all of its resources would be devoted to the support of any colony it succeeded in establishing. Although it could never land, the intention was that it would remain in orbit around the colony world, an integral part of of the endeavor.”

“We shall, of course, provide the colony with the support it needs to become self-sufficient,” Milyukov said. “But our ultimate purpose and manifest destiny is to go on toward the center of the galaxy, spreading the seed of humanity as widely as we can.”

“But you’re only carrying so much human cargo,” Matthew pointed out. “The embryos in the gene banks could be split repeatedly, I suppose, cloning entire new sets, with only a small percentage loss at each stage, but you can’t replace the people in SusAn: the primary colonists.”

“Of course we can,” Milyukov retorted. He didn’t elaborate, electing instead merely to stare at Matthew. The stare implied that a man of Matthew’s intelligence ought to have no difficulty following the thread of his argument.

What Captain Milyukov was thinking, Matthew had to suppose, was that the living colonists could indeed be replaced. Their genetic resources could be duplicated by nuclear transfer cloning, and the resultant children could be educated aboard Hopeto something like the same level of attainment as the donors. When their education was deemed to be complete they could be replaced in the empty SusAn chambers, ready for decanting all over again. There would be an attrition rate, of course—but even the amnesiacs whose minds had not survived the 700 years of stasis could still be counted a genetic resource, replaceable as biological individuals. Assuming that Hopewas still in contact with probes sent out from Earth—and with Earth itself, although a 58-year transmission time would make meaningful dialogue enormously difficult—the gradual loss of inbuilt knowledge and expertise could probably be compensated by imported wisdom.

There was nothing intrinsically impossible about the crew’s new plan. Hopemight indeed seed a dozen worlds rather than one, if her indefatigable crew could find a dozen that were sufficiently hospitable—but any estimate of her chances of success would have to take into account her experience in attempting to seed thisone. If this colony succeeded, others would probably succeed too, but if it failed, the crew’s “ultimate purpose” and “manifest destiny” might begin to seem horribly impractical. This was the critical point, at which the whole scheme might be most easily aborted. Milyukov knew and understood that. He knew that the future he and his people had planned for themselves depended very heavily on what happened here and now. If the colony succeeded, in spite of the fact that the world was a marginal candidate for acceptance as an Earth-clone, the prospects of further success would seem very rosy, but if this attempt ended in disaster the crew would have to reassess the fruits of their revolution.

“Now I understand why you need me,” Matthew said, mildly. “It will need an ecologist of genius to figure out whether a colony deposited on the surface and abandoned by Hopecould ever be viable, and a televangelist of genius to sell the idea.”

The dull green gaze fixed itself upon him. “Nobody expects miracles from you, Professor Fleury,” Milyukov assured him, unable now to suppress a note of sarcasm. “You have been fully awake for less than twenty hours, and cannot hope to catch up with everything that has been learned during these last three years—but your opinion will doubtless be weighed for what it is worth. No one, incidentally, has proposed that the colony be abandoned. Everyone recognizes that there will come a time when the colony no longer needs pseudo-parental supervision—when it too, can declare its independence, its freedom, its ability to decide and define its own destiny. What we all need from the scientists on the surface is a carefully measured and meticulously reasoned account of the best strategy that will lead us to that goal. If you are to make any contribution to that mission you will need to do a great deal of work. Andrei Lityansky is ready to begin your education at a moment’s notice. He’ll give you as much help as he can while your surface-suits are made ready.”

Matthew was careful to remain impassive, although it required an effort. “You’re absolutely right, captain,” he said, calmly. “I really should get on with that as soon as possible.” He stood up immediately and moved toward the door. When Solari put his hands on the arms of his own chair, as if to lever himself up, Matthew added: “That’s okay, Vince. I dare say the captain wants to give you such details of the crime as he’s managed to collect. I’m sure our friend with the gun can take me where I need to go. I’ll see you back in the sick bay.”

He opened the door and stepped out, without bothering to look back at Konstantin Milyukov.

NINE

The man with the sidearm was still waiting patiently outside, as Matthew had expected. He seemed slightly surprised to see Matthew emerge unaccompanied, but he nodded readily enough when Matthew asked to be taken to see Andrei Lityansky. He took a phone from his belt and thumbed the buttons. He didn’t put it to his ear: the text-display obviously told him what he wanted to know.

“He’s not in the lab just now,” Riddell reported, “but I’ve paged him. He’ll meet us there as soon as he can. This way.”

Once they’d rounded a couple of bends and taken a branching corridor Matthew could no longer tell whether they were heading in the same direction as the one from which they had come or a completely different one, but he took note of the fact that there were not nearly as many people about now that he had been fed the captain’s point of view.

He glanced behind several times, catching glimpses of another man who was obviously heading for the same destination but seemed to prefer that the curves of the corridors obscured him from sight. The follower did not seem to be carrying a gun.

Having no idea how long the journey would be, Matthew felt constrained to act quickly. He waited until they came abreast of one of the blacked-out corridors, and then turned on Riddell without warning, grabbing him by the throat and attempting to slam the man’s head against the corridor wall. Had he been fully fit the power of his muscles would have been easily adequate to the task, but his coordination was awry. Riddell sustained a nasty bump but he ducked far enough forward to make sure that he was not knocked out.

Knowing that reinforcements would arrive within seconds rather than minutes, Matthew brought his knee up into the other man’s groin, then threw his whole body sideways in order to slam his victim into the wall for a second time.

It was ugly and untidy, but it worked. Riddell went limp.

Matthew grabbed at the gun, but he was far too clumsy to be able to snatch it out of the holster. Indeed, he was so far off balance in the unfamiliar gravity regime that he slammed into the wall himself, bruising his arm. He had no time to nurse the bruise—he had to regain his footing immediately in order to respond to the follower’s rapid approach. Knowing that brute force was his only option, he lashed out with his uninjured arm. The attacker tried to duck, but he had been in too much of a hurry. The punch caught him under the nose, and snapped his head back with a horrible click.

Matthew cursed volubly, fearing that he had broken at least one of his knucklebones, but he still had the presence of mind to hurl himself into the dark corridor and run as fast as he could along it.

No lights came on as he passed through the corridor; it was presumably dark because the lighting had failed. That was his first stroke of luck. His second was that he did not cannon into anything solid before stabilizing his lurching run and sticking out a hand so that he could trail the fingers along the wall, tracking its contours.

Running blind was more difficult than he had anticipated, but he slowed to a walk quickly enough. He took a left turn, then a right, then backtracked to avoid light up ahead. He was already completely lost, in an environment whose layout and dimensions were utterly unknown to him, but knew that if he failed in what he was trying to do he could always surrender to the crew.

In the meantime, he just kept moving, clinging to the darkness.

The darkness, he now assumed, must be a result of Shen Chin Che’s “sabotage.” The darkness was where the territory that Shen had reclaimed from Milyukov had to be. There might, however, be an awful lot of darkness. If Hopehad the floor space of a sizable Earthly town, there might be a lot of empty space to which no one had bothered to lay claim. To judge by the photographs in Milyukov’s office the crew had recently been busy increasing their numbers, but they had started from a tiny base; they had hardly begun to implement their “manifest destiny.”

He was beginning to wonder whether he might have made a horrible mistake when he saw an anomalous light in the distance: a green light. One of the dead wallscreens had come to life. He hurried forward, and was relieved to find that the green glow was shaped like an arrow. A single word was etched in black on the shaft of the arrow: Follow.

He followed the arrow. The corridors’ overhead lighting remained inactive, but screens continued to light up as he came to junctions and corners. The next few arrows were mute, but the sixth had the word Hurryincorporated into its shaft.

Matthew tried to accelerate his pace, but he was too clumsy. By the time he had rounded half a dozen gentle corners he had lurched into the wall twice, cursing the fact that his mass remained the same no matter how light his weight might be. He ignored the pain and tried to concentrate on following the course at a steady pace. Running was out of the question anyway; he was out of condition and already out of breath. He was unable to take long strides because he was so utterly unused to the conditions and so incompetent in the management of his momentum. He had plenty of time thereafter to be astonished by the length and intricacy of the route he was following.

When Milyukov had said that Hopehad the floor space of a town, Matthew had automatically pictured the area in question as a circular arena crisscrossed by thousands of mazy walls, but Hope’s metallic kernel was more ameboid than spherical and there was also a third dimension to be taken into account. There were no flights of steps and not very many doors and airlocks to negotiate, but Matthew soon became aware of subtle variations in his weight as he was guided closer to the ship’s inner core, then away again, then back and forth for a second time. His newly light head began to spin, and he could not quell the rising tide of dizziness even with the aid of his IT.

He tried hard not to fall, palming himself off the wall as he stumbled, but he paused too late. His inner ear gave up the unequal fight and he collapsed, flattening himself against the floor as if it were a vertical surface from which he might begin to slide at any moment. Not until he had remained perfectly still for more than three minutes– hisminutes, not ship-minutes—did he recover possession of himself.

The darkness and the dereliction seemed to be weighing down on him, mocking him. He had already worked out, on a purely intellectual level, the magnitude of the trouble that Hopewas in, but now he feltthe cold antipathy of circumstance. He had not noticed the cold so much while he was walking, but now he was lying down it was seeping from the floor into his bones. He was acutely aware of his own tininess by comparison with the artifact in which he was contained—but he was aware too, of the tininess of the artifact itself. Sheathed in cometary ice as it was, it must be gleaming in the skies of the world it was orbiting, but it was no more than a spark in the void: a spark whose name had taken on a cruelly ironic gloss now that its internal community was riven with such awkward disagreements.

Whether the new colony was fundamentally viable or not, Matthew realized, it could not succeed without far better support than Konstantin Milyukov was presently minded to deliver. The crew knew that, and the colonists knew it, but three years of strife had made them stubborn—stubborn enough for their own internal divisions to be widening into cracks, slowly but inexorably. Everyone had someone else to blame for the mission’s predicament. He, newly arrived without the stain of any original sin, could blame everybody, and he did.

Except, of course, that he was no longer quitewithout sin. He had attacked Riddell, and hurt the other man set to watch him. He was involved now; he had planted his own flag, and stood ready to defend it as stubbornly as anyone.

But the real enemy, he knew, was the darkness and emptiness of the void. Although Hopehad arrived in a new solar system, the void was still here, still everywhere.

He sat up, peering into the darkness of the inclined corridor.

At first, he could see nothing through the gloom but an arrow of light, but after a few minutes the arrow changed into a text message.

Not Much Further, it said.

Matthew groaned, and hauled himself back to his feet. The arrow was restored, and Matthew followed it.

He was passing through doorways more frequently now, but the winding corridors were so extensive and so utterly deserted that Hopewas beginning to seem a ghost ship: a starfaring Mary Celeste. There was living space here for tens of thousands, Matthew realized, perhaps hundreds of thousands. The crew must have been working on the inner architecture of Hopeever since she had left the system, but their robots had been put away for the time being and they had yet to move on to the next stage in the process of evolution: the one that would make the ship into an authentic microworld, with a microworld’s population. Had they begun to fill these spaces with their own descendants immediately after their departure from the solar system, the reawakened parent-colonists would have found themselves a very tiny minority indeed, but the revolution must have happened in the later phases of the voyage. That part of the revolutionaries’ scheme was still in its early stages—and what disaster might Shen Chin Che’s counterrevolution have precipitated if these spaces had not been empty? Perhaps they would not have been filled in any case, given that space would have had to be reserved for the colonists’ future clone-children, whose generative nuclei had not been removable until they were unfrozen.

Matthew was expecting a return to the light and a genuine rendezvous, but he was disappointed. Instead of a room as homely as Milyukov’s, all he found at the end of his rat-run was one more wallscreen at a darkened corner, displaying a half-familiar face.

There was a camera eye positioned above the screen, but Matthew did not suppose that the glimmer of reflected light could do justice to his features. That, he thought, was a pity. He realized that he had not seen his own face since he came out of SusAn, but he was sure that it could not possibly have changed as much as the face that was peering at him from the wall.

“Shen,” he said, to acknowledge that he could see the face. For the moment, he couldn’t say anything more.

“I’m sorry, Matthew,” the face said. “I can’t take the risk of bringing you in.”

This wasn’t the kind of welcome Matthew had been expecting. It wasn’t the kind of greeting he felt they were both entitled to, after the kind of epic journey they had made.

Had Shen actually been present, Matthew could have bowed first, then thrown his arms around the smaller man … but as things were, he could only stare at the unexpected image on the screen.

Shen Chin Che looked a good deal older than he had been in 2090, when Matthew had last seen him. Matthew realized, belatedly, that what had been a matter of days for him must have been a matter of years, or decades, for the other man.

“We made it, Shen,” he said, defiantly. “No matter how badly the hired help has contrived to fuck it up, we made it! Fifty-eight light-years. Seven hundred years.”

Shen Chin Che blinked in surprise, as if he too had forgotten to factor the difference in their ages into the equation. “It hasbeen a long time, Matthew,” he conceded.

Matthew remembered what Nita Brownell had told him about the vulnerability of memory, and wondered how well Shen’s memories of him compared to his memories of Shen. He also remembered that the first great prophet to lead his people to a Promised Land, across a wilderness that must have seemed just as intimidating as the desert of the void had seemed to the men of the twenty-first century, had not lived to join his people in that land, seeing it only from a distance. Shen’s age, Matthew realized, might be the greatest advantage Konstantin Milyukov had in the struggle for possession of Hope.

The Chosen People had been subject to an age restriction; the idea had been that the parental generation must be old enough to have proved their wisdom, but young enough to have more than half a century of life before them. Shen had obviously made an exception of himself. Shen had remained awake to supervise the building and equipping of his Ark—perhaps a little too long.

“When were you frozen down?” Matthew asked, soberly.

“Not till 2139,” Shen told him.

Matthew made the calculation easily enough, although he couldn’t be sure of the exact fraction of the three years since Hopehad arrived in orbit that Shen had lived through.

Shen Chin Che was about fifty years older than he had been when Matthew saw him last, when he had already been the older man by more than a decade. He was now more than a hundred years old—and it was probably safe to assume that he would not easily get the benefit of any advances in longevity technology to which the crew had gained access en route.

“Why are we meeting like this?” Matthew asked him, trying not to seem too aggrieved.

“There’s a possibility that Milyukov woke you up in order that you might serve as a Judas goat,” Shen told him. “Even if that wasn’t his sole intention, he’s bound to have sowed your suitskin with the cleverest bugs his people can devise. They have some new tricks, thanks to their exchanges of information with the probes that overtook them—if they hadn’t, I’d have won by now.”

“Well,” Matthew said, philosophically, “it’s good to see you anyway.”

“It’s good to see you too, Matthew,” the old man assured him. “Your memory’s good, I hope—you must remember our last meeting a great deal better than I do.”

“I remember it very well,” Matthew said. “I won’t say that you don’t look a day older, but you always wore well.”

It was true. Shen Chin Che was not a tall man, nor had he entirely resisted a certain inherited tendency to rotundity, but on and off Earth he had been a man of iron discipline as well as a man possessed of state-of-the-art IT and smart clothing. He always had worn well. His light brown skin still seemed to have the same near-golden glow that Matthew remembered, undulled by age or by recent years spent beneath the meager glare of the ship’s artificial lighting, but it was wrinkled now.

“We may not have much time,” Shen said. “Some day, I’ll fill you in on the history of my last half century, but that will have to wait. We have to do the important stuff first, in case we never get a chance to do the rest.” His voice was harrowingly bleak.

“I understand,” Matthew said, although he wasn’t entirely sure that he did. “So tell me the important stuff.”