Eternity's End (55 page)

"And are they wrong?" Deutsch asked. Before anyone could answer, he added, "Don't forget, these guys are not entirely playing with their own decks here." He tapped the side of his head. "I don't
think
I'm being programmed to respond to you in any particular way, but I'm not sure the same thing is true of the
Phoenix
crew. There may be low-level safeguards against the spilling of information."

Legroeder opened his mouth, closed it. If the augments were keeping the Kyber crew hostile... "I'd better talk to Captain Glenswarg about that. If they want us to find
Impris
, and there's a chance she's actually lost in the Deep Flux..."

"It would be very helpful," said Cantha, "if you could use your influence with the captain."

That drew a low hiss from behind Legroeder, and he turned to see Ker'sell's eyes narrowed to thin vertical slits. Legroeder sighed impatiently. "Look, Ker'sell. Unless we cooperate with the Kyber, we'll never find the ship. I didn't sell out to them."
At least, I don't think I did
.

Ker'sell blinked slowly, looking like a large, dangerous lizard. "Perhaps not," he said. "But remember that
our
interests are not the same as the
Kyber's
." He almost spat the word as he flexed his long-fingered hands. Had his nails grown long and sharp when Legroeder wasn't watching, or had they always been that way? "I will be watching to see whose interests you serve."

"Please do," Legroeder said softly, trying to sound merely annoyed rather than alarmed. He drew a breath. "And now, if you'll all excuse me, I think I'll go have that talk with the captain."

Glenswarg crossed his arms over his chest, facing Legroeder in the commander's wardroom. "What do you expect me to do about it? I can't
make
my men like the Narseil. As long as they're doing their jobs—"

"But that's just it. They're not—" Legroeder caught himself.

"Are you suggested they're
not
doing their jobs?" Glenswarg asked in a low voice.
Are you questioning my leadership?

Legroeder steeled himself. "They're not sharing information," he said slowly. "At least, not freely enough to enable our riggers, and researchers—"
brought to you at enormous cost, across many light-years
"—to do what's necessary to complete our mission. To find
Impris
."

"I am aware of our mission, Rigger."

"Yes, sir." Legroeder paused. "If you don't mind my asking, Captain—are these crew under... augment control?"

Glenswarg's gaze narrowed even more. "I don't see what concern that is of yours."

"Yes, well—" Legroeder cleared his throat "—let's just say, if they're
intentionally
being made to be suspicious of us, perhaps there is some adjustment that could be made..." His voice trailed off, as the captain's eyes grew more and more slitted.

"You're treading very close to accusing me of incompetence, or sabotage," Glenswarg growled.

Legroeder kept very still for a moment, holding the captain's gaze. "I don't mean to, sir," he said evenly, at last.

There was another pause that seemed to last a dozen heartbeats. "I'll see what can be done," Glenswarg said. "Dismissed."

"Thank you, Captain..."

Legroeder's request seemed to bear fruit. During the following days, he often saw Cantha working at the sim console with one or more of the Kyber bridge crew; and the Narseil reported in private that the Kyber navigators were becoming a little less grudging in cooperating with his requests. No one was declaring the end of mutual suspicions, but at least he had a sense that they were working together. Of all those on the ship, Cantha clearly had the deepest understanding of the subtleties of the underflux—and even the Kyber crew were coming to recognize that fact, or were being permitted to recognize it.

Days passed, as they flew within distant view of the Great Barrier Nebula, a ghostly green wall that stretched for many light-years along the edge of Golen Space. They were passing to the galactic north of the region known as the Sargasso, where Robert McGinnis had once been shipwrecked. Legroeder fervently hoped that they would have no need to fly any closer to the Sargasso than they were now.

He might as well have wished for a moon.

When Cantha called the riggers together for a look at his latest mapping displays, they were joined by the Kyber crew and captain. As everyone gathered around the floating holo of nearby space, Cantha raised a wand and shone a thin pointer of light into the display. "What I've been trying to establish is a track of where
Impris
has been seen, and ultimately where we might
expect
to see her—or better yet, have a chance of breaking through to
reach
her."

"Explain," said the captain, the light of the holo playing over his frowning face.

Cantha moved the pointer-beam through the glowing display. "The ships that are out there shadowing
Impris
apparently pick up only intermittent ghost traces—so at best, even with the extra information you obtained, we have only bits and pieces of her course."

"So what's the
good
news?" said Glenswarg.

"I've been making new projections, based not just on
Impris
sightings, but on what we think we know of the structure of the underflux." Cantha caused the holo to rotate in mid-air, then pointed out their current destination, not far from the Akeides Nebula. "Here's where the most recent intelligence places
Impris
, based on KM/C's movements." He touched a handheld controller, and something changed in the display: previously unfocused details came into focus, as though they were peering deeper into a multidimensional display. "Now, observe these green lines." He traced a series of spidery threads, through the newly focused region. "These are routes that I believe
Impris
could have followed in recent months." He peered through the display at the others. "These are not paths through the
known
Flux, but projections into the
under
flux—possibly into the lowest layers, what you call the Deep Flux. These are projections only. It is a poorly mapped region, to say the least."

Legroeder squinted, trying to visualize the elusive layer in which
Impris
might be trapped. Cantha's lines zigzagged to the south and radially out on the galactic meridian—converging in one region before spreading out again in other directions. "What's that area of convergence?" he asked—uneasily, because he thought he knew the answer. "Is that the Sargasso?"

"Indeed," said Cantha, with a tone of satisfaction that gave Legroeder a shiver. The Narseil's gaze pierced him for a moment, then shifted suddenly to Captain Glenswarg. "I believe, if we wish to catch up with
Impris
, the place to do it is in the Sargasso."

Legroeder's heart sank.

"That is," Cantha continued, over the muttering of the Kyber crewmen, "if we don't merely want to catch sight of her, but want to actually find her and rendezvous with her." Cantha looked around the room, the display shining on his vertical amphibian eyes, to see if he'd gotten everyone's attention.

Legroeder closed his eyes for a moment, trying to shut out the protests of the others. The Sargasso: a dead zone, where the currents of the Flux dwindled to a stop. Who knew why? And who knew how many ships were stranded there right now—not in the strange, ghostly immortality of
Impris
, but just stranded in the motionless Flux, dying like animals caught in quicksand. If they went in with
Phoenix
, looking for
Impris
, what were their chances of coming out again?

Not good, he thought.

Except that Cantha was suggesting it. And he trusted Cantha's opinion as much as he trusted his own rigging.

"I think, Narseil Cantha," said the captain in a tight, flat voice, "that you have a great deal of explaining to do. Are you seriously recommending that we take this ship into the Sargasso?"

"Yes, Captain," Cantha said. He pointed to the place where the green tracings converged, and altered the focus slowly to a higher level of the Flux, and then back down. The map changed in texture and color as he shifted the display. Cantha's pointer-beam traced green paths through the layers. "Here is what I want you to see. I don't know which of these paths
Impris
has followed—perhaps none of them precisely. But the important thing is that they come together, and
rise very close to the level of the normal Flux
—here in the Sargasso." He peered through the display at the captain. "That's the key. If we want to reach
Impris
, we have to break through into the level where she's trapped. And the Sargasso is the only place I see to do it."

"You're out of your mind," muttered a Kyber crewman. "Why the hell are we listening to this?" said another.

Christ Almighty,
Legroeder thought, gazing into Cantha's eyes. He felt despair.

"It could be a very dangerous course to take," Deutsch rumbled, breaking through the grumbling.

"Yes," said Glenswarg, commanding silence with an arch of his bristly eyebrows. "It sounds extremely dangerous." He paused, allowing Cantha to continue.

"That is true," Cantha said. "And that is why we need to talk about the underflux. And about the
spatial flaws
I believe may underlie it."

"
What
spatial flaws?" growled a Kyber rigger.

Cantha placed his hands together, forefingers pointing into the holo. "The Flux, generally speaking, displays a fairly smooth progression of dimensionality as we move through descending layers. But, from layer to layer, we may encounter differing currents of movement—yes?" He glanced sharply at Derrek, the Kyber navigator, who shrugged.

"As you go deeper and deeper, you may reach a point where the movement slows too much; and if you're using standard rigging techniques, you lose the ability to maneuver. Or, you simply come to a halt—like getting stuck in silt at the bottom of a river."

"Like in the Sargasso," Deutsch said.

"Almost." Cantha raised a finger. "There's a crucial difference. The Sargasso is a place where currents seem to lose their energy—but there it happens in the
normal
levels of the Flux, which is what makes it such a hazard. But
why
do the currents lose energy? Is it just a cancellation effect of converging currents? Or is it something more?"

Palagren's neck-sail stiffened. "Cantha, are you sure you should tell them—?"

"Why not?" Cantha asked. "We've demanded that they share their knowledge with us."

Palagren's mouth tightened. "But this information—"

"Is essential to finding
Impris
. How else can we do it?"

Palagren's eyes seemed filled with uncertainty; but finally he gestured acquiescence.

"So what's the explanation?" Legroeder prompted.

Cantha hissed softly. "The Narseil Rigging Institute believes there are flaws—
fractures
, if you will—in the structure of spacetime in the Sargasso. We believe that currents may be leaking
out
of the normal layers of the Flux into a deeper substrate... into the underflux." He gestured to Legroeder. "You've read the Fandrang Report. It talked about regions of high 'EQ.' We don't use that terminology anymore—but this may be a related phenomenon."

"These fractures—are you talking about openings that go all the way down into the Deep Flux?" Glenswarg asked, looking troubled.

"Possibly," Cantha said. "We don't
know
how deep they might go. In the Narseil understanding of the Deep Flux, there are layers far down in the underflux—" the holo shifted to a deeper level, and many of the star systems still visible as ghostly images seemed to draw closer together "—where extremely long routes in normal-space are shortened and compacted, but at the cost of becoming far more unpredictable." The threads marking starship routes became blurred and wavering. "Too unpredictable, in our view, for safe travel."

Cantha walked around the display, pointing here and there. "We can only guess at the details. But we have identified places where subsurface
cusps
or
folds
in the Flux
may
occur. Places where movement along hidden boundaries can result in abrupt transitions." The display flickered with topographic shifts and folds as his pointer beam moved along the indistinct route-threads. "It may happen so abruptly that an unsuspecting crew might not know how to make the transition back."

Legroeder blinked. "And you think this is what happened to
Impris?
"

Cantha steepled his long-fingered hands together. "Quite likely. I also believe this is how she can be
found
."

Glenswarg cleared his throat. "And that's why you're asking me to risk this ship in the Sargasso?"

"It is a risk," Cantha agreed. "But if these flaws exist, as we believe, in the Sargasso, then they could provide openings where we could break through into the underlying layers."

Glenswarg waved his arm through the holo. "But
Impris
isn't there. As far as we know, she's up here." He pointed to what was now the far corner of the display, at the point marking their present destination.

"Indeed," Palagren said, stirring. "She was last seen up there. But that doesn't mean we can
reach
her from there. Legroeder—when you encountered
Impris
seven years ago, did you have any sense that you could have physically reached her?"

"You mean, if we hadn't been attacked?" Legroeder shook his head. "I don't think so. We saw it, heard her riggers in the net... and then it faded, just as the attacking ship—" He shuddered, and allowed the inner hands of the implants to close off that memory for him.

"Exactly. It's there, but it's insubstantial... and then in a matter of seconds, it's gone again. Cantha, can you show the folds more clearly?" As the display changed to highlight the features, Palagren traced with his hand along the irregularities in the Flux. "We suspect that
Impris
may have become trapped somehow inside one of these folds in the underflux. Trapped in a parallel channel—seemingly close to us, and yet isolated." Palagren glanced around. "She does seem to move very quickly from one location to another."