Implied Spaces (41 page)

The eyes of those who, safe at home, now watched with intense pleasure as their most violent fantasies were brought to reality.

He wondered if he were the only person in the room who saw the destruction of Courtland as a defeat. It was only because everything tried before this had failed that the war could be considered anything less than a rout.

It wasn’t only Pablo’s dream that died this day.

Aristide wondered what Vindex thought as he saw the nine surviving AI platforms mounting over the sun’s disk like a series of black dawns, rotating to expose the caverns, black-on-black, that were the exits for the mass drivers built in accordance with the plans from the Advisory Committee on Science.

Courtland began a slow curving shift in its trajectory in a useless, last-minute effort to evade whatever Vindex imagined the United Powers might be about to hurl at him.

The mass drivers fired in absolute silence. Bad Pablo’s detectors would have had a few seconds to observe the blue-shifted trajectories of the vast iron missiles heading straight for him, would see the brilliant ionized tails as they skimmed through the sun’s corona; and Pablo might have just enough time to realize he was about to become one of history’s most spectacular and miserable failures.

On the video screens Aristide saw Courtland’s end, the neatly spaced flares as the missiles struck home. Brilliant spheres of plasma expanded from the impacts, their glow picking out the cracks that had spiderwebbed across Courtland’s structure.

What was left of Courtland came apart like a polished black china plate striking a black marble floor.

The audience in the ballroom cheered, as if the home team had just scored a winning goal.

The flying bits of Courtland, now defenseless, would be rounded up, rendered inert, and used to rebuild Gemma, Aloysius, and eventually a new Courtland—a Courtland neutered, deprived of Pablo, and probably having been granted a name change.

Analysts reported that none of Courtland’s pockets survived, at least in this universe.

The great disk-shaped bodies of the Loyal Nine began to swing, the mass drivers now pointed away from the sun.

A volley of projectiles was fired, and then another and another. Smaller antimatter-powered drones launched into the darkness like whole migrations of birds.

After calculating the trajectories of its two shots, the location of Bad Pablo’s mass driver was pretty well known. What wasn’t known were the driver’s instructions—would it fire on its own, without orders from Pablo? Or did Pablo’s Kuiper Belt headquarters contain a pool of life, that would resurrect him should Courtland fail?

These last shots were designed to solve these problems. The planetoid where the mass driver was housed would be hit repeatedly until it was turned into a ball of molten lava. Anything left would be targeted by antimatter missiles. And then a third wave would arrive, robots that would construct a new presence in the Kuiper Belt, a base that would house uploaded humans who would be in charge of the effort to eradicate Bad Pablo completely from the outer reaches of the solar system.

Relieved chatter sounded in the galleries. The Prime Minister was surrounded by a circle of well-wishers. Sous-chefs in white coats marched into the great room, pushing buffet tables gleaming with chafing dishes and loaded with tubs of snow, the necks of champagne bottles protruding from the drifts of white like the barrels of triumphant artillery.

“Damn chatter.” Aristide overheard the sour remarks of the Ambassador from Fred. “Damn people. To hell with this.”

The ambassador grumped out, hands in his pockets. Aristide stayed until the overpocket was shrunk down and the star field came back on, the familiar constellations reappearing to great applause from the audience. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, the hundreds of Tombaugh Objects, lots of dirty ice, and many smaller objects would now abandon their straight trajectories and swing again into gentle curves as the sun’s gravity once again embraced them.

Orbits twenty-four days farther out. The war had altered even the shape of the solar system.

The overpocket had not been dissipated, but shrunk down to microscopic size, and was now held ready in the Physics Annex of the Nanjing Institute in Nanjing, the Western Paradise, Swallowing Clouds. In the event of any more hostile projectiles from the Kuiper Belt, the handy little universe could be instantly inflated until the menace had passed.

For a few moments Aristide absorbed the starlight, and then he made his way out. When he stepped through the hatch to the outside promenade, he had to pause to let his eyes adjust. The dim starlit ballroom had obscured the fact that here on Topaz, it was bright morning.

He had an appointment to keep.

He was going to a Celebration of the Recently Unemployed.

Bitsy waited in Aristide’s car; together they drove to the Tellurian House restaurant, where they were taken to the chef’s table. The walls were covered in fountains that used not water, but a superfluid that flowed upward from floor-level pools, moving in an uneasy, creeping fashion that Aristide didn’t find entirely comfortable.

The table was covered in hammered copper. The chairs were an authentic re-creation of Mission Style, and therefore uncomfortable.

Aristide greeted Shenai, who headed the table as if chairing a meeting of her shadow cabinet. Flanking her were former members of the Standing Committee who had fallen from power along with their leader: there were the ex-Ministers of Industry and Biological Sciences, the erstwhile Chancellor, and her onetime deputy prime minister.

Commissar Lin attended as well. He hadn’t lost his job exactly, but would be returned to his former duties once the Domus began to downsize and resumed its search for criminals instead of hidden networks of pod people.

Tumusok would have been invited, had he not already followed his new job to another pocket.

“Barring a few hundred more explosions,” Aristide said, “the war seems to be over.”

“We heard,” said Shenai.

Aristide seated himself. A menu appeared in the air before him, and he banished it with a wave of his hand.

Bitsy jumped onto the empty end of the table, opposite Shenai, and sat on her haunches, directing her green-eyed stare down the table.

“We were discussing,” Shenai said, “how the war has altered our perceptions of… well,
everything
.”

“Beginning at the foundations of the universe,” said Aristide, “and stretching onward from there.”

“The last time our civilization had this comprehensive a scare,” Lin said, “we built all
this
.” With a wave of his pipe that encompassed a good deal more than the copper table and the reverse waterfalls. “We’ve lost two-elevenths of everything… worlds, people… you can rebuild both worlds and people, but what of the society they belonged to?”

“Speaking as someone who had as much to do with building that society as anyone,” Aristide said, “I’d be sad to see it go.”

“Yet it may be wounded severely, if not mortally. It was based on a sense of security that no longer exists.” Lin opened an envelope of tobacco and began packing his pipe. “People may demand leaders who promise them absolute security—and the sort of leaders who promise absolutes are not, historically speaking, the kind you actually want running your nation.”

He struck a match, puffed, blew smoke.

“A related problem,” Shenai began. “Over the last months we’ve constructed a vast military and security apparatus, which may be reluctant to disperse. Or which the leadership may find too
useful
to disperse.”

Aristide looked down the table with a grim smile. “Solve one problem with mass drivers,” he said, “and
all
problems begin to seem solvable by mass drivers.”

“We want all that stuff under control!” said the onetime Minister of Industry, his eyes wide. “Mass drivers, homicidal robots, biological weaponry… we’ve got to work out ways of decommissioning it all before we get too used to it being there, looking over our shoulders.”

“Indeed,” said Shenai. She ran her fingertips through her yellow hair. “Well, I have done my bit for the open society.” She lifted her eyes to Bitsy. “Or so I believe, yes?”

“Endora,” said Bitsy, “has carried out your instructions.”

Shenai gave a tightlipped smile. “Excellent.” And at the sight of the others’ wondering looks, she said, “Before I returned my keys of office to the President, I ordered that all official war deliberations were to be released by Endora into the public record as soon as the menace from Courtland was ended. Which was—what?—ninety minutes ago?”

Aristide looked at her in admiration. “Brilliant!” he said.

“Of course it only deals with my own administration, here on Topaz. But within those limits, all that was classified secret will now be revealed. Who said what at which meeting, and,” she smiled grimly, “what heads of other governments counseled what course of action, including surrender.” She nodded. “I expect some heads will roll,” she said. “Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

Her former deputy prime minister looked at her in shock.

“Kiernan can’t stop it?” he said.

Shenai’s little smile grew smug. “If he had known about my orders to Endora, and if he had countermanded them, then of course all the records would still be under seal. But he didn’t, and he hasn’t, and so…” She waved her glass. “There’s a good deal that Kiernan still has to learn about politics, and he just got a big lesson.”

The former Biological Sciences Minister looked at her with admiration.

“Will you be opposing Kiernan in caucus?”

She shook her head. “I’ll stick around long enough to help choose his successor. But I don’t want to stay long enough to become a complete political creature. Look at du Barry or Shu Meng—they’ve been in politics for four or five hundred years, and they look at everything in terms of political relationships, networks of power, architectures of prerogative and authority… Half the relationships they see don’t even exist, and most of the remainder don’t matter.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to turn into
that
. Best to walk away while I can. End on a high note.”

“What shall you do, then?” asked Lin.

“I told Pablo,” she said, looking at Aristide, “that I might emigrate.”

“A worthy choice,” Aristide said. “Though given recent events you may discover that you’re more popular than you think you are, and that will make it difficult to leave.”

Her lips quirked in a skeptical smile. “An agreeable fantasy,” she said. “If true.”

“For myself,” said Aristide, “I think I shall adopt the ultimate aim of the Venger’s program, and carry it forward past his death. I propose to storm Heaven.”

The others stared at him. He shrugged.

“Well, why not? It’s a worthy goal—to find out who made us, and why. And unlike my late double, I won’t insist that you all accompany me.”

“Possibly,” Lin ventured. “But if you announce that goal
now
…” He shook his head. “Speaking strictly from the professional point of view, I would not care to guarantee your security.”

“People are going to wonder,” Shenai said, “if the right Pablo returned from Courtland.”

“Admittedly,” Aristide said, “the public mind may have to mature a bit before I make the announcement.” He nodded at Shenai. “I’ll take the advice of political professionals on the timing.”

“Besides,” said Bitsy, breaking in, “the technology isn’t quite there yet. We can project a wormhole into a universe we create, and now—as with the overpocket—we can now project one anywhere in
our
universe, but to project one into a pre-existing universe, like Heaven, will require some work.”

“And we’ll want to rescue our lost pockets first,” Shenai said. “We’ll want to reconnect Midgarth and Hawaiki and the others—and if we can send a hypertube to New Qom or any of the Venger’s other strongholds, we’ll still have to invade and occupy them.”

“Before they do it to
us,
” said the deputy prime minister.

There was a moment’s uncomfortable silence.

“The ability to project a wormhole within our own universe will create enough changes as it is,” said the quondam Minister of Industry. “Instead of uploading ourselves into a projectile and firing ourselves across light-years to reach another star, we’ll be able to walk there with a single step. Everything will be open to us—stars, clusters, other galaxies.”

“And other times,” Aristide said. “Though apparently the math won’t let us violate causality—a restriction for which, on mature consideration, I am thankful.”

Shenai leaned forward, a frown on her face. “But getting back to
your
project, Pablo. How are you going to get political agreement on this? Half the religious pockets are going to be against it, right from the start.”

Aristide looked ceilingward in calculation. “There are how many political entities now, in the various pockets? A hundred and fifty-something?”

“Something like that.”

“All I need is for
one
to agree with me,” Aristide said. “We’re all experts in creating wormholes now—it shouldn’t be that hard, once the basic theory is done. And besides, now that the idea of its
possibility
has escaped into our universe, the act itself has become
inevitable
—so why shouldn’t it be me who does it?”

Shenai laughed, and raised her glass.

“Your logic is irrefutable.”

“You said you might emigrate,” Aristide said. “Why don’t you come with me—to Heaven?”

She shook her head. “I’ll need another demi-bottle before I consider that.”

“Well,” said Aristide, “shall we order?”

More bottles and demi-bottles arrived, and food as well. As the party broke up, Aristide offered Shenai a ride, and she accepted.

“Where shall I take you?”

Her face turned doleful. “Anywhere but the miserable little apartment Kiernan gave me,” she said.

“I have only a suite in a hotel.”

She smiled. “Does it have a view?”

“It does.”

“Of Heaven?”

“Perhaps,” he said, “a distant prospect.”

The Destiny took them to the pink-and-white hotel. The desk clerk looked at him with surprise as he walked past—it wasn’t every day, Aristide supposed, that he entered with a drunken Prime Minister on his arm.