Resolution (79 page)

It was perhaps an hour later when Chalou stopped humming softly to himself and turned to Ro. ‘Look ... This explorer, Mam’selle Chandri, who has caused so much trouble ... If you slip away quietly, there will be little fuss. She’s all they’re interested in.’

Claude Chalou had a life - perhaps a twilit half-life - to return to in Oxford.

‘What if one of the passengers,’ said Ro, ‘fails to wake up?’

‘And what if station personnel demand to scan the holds? Standard procedure in an accident.’

‘They won’t find any malfunction.’

‘But they might find the matter compiler which McLean and I stole for you.’

‘Goddamn it, Claude. The passengers are my responsibility.’

After a moment, Claude Chalou nodded.
‘C’est ça. C’est exact, bien sûr.’

Something faint pinged in a display, was gone.

What the hell was that?

Ro could make no sense of it. Increasing the sensors’ gain, while simultaneously reviewing the log and attempting to analyse the signal, she searched for the source.

‘Electromagnetic flare.’ Chalou, though blind in realspace, had heard the tone and guessed what she was doing. ‘From the star.’

‘Yeah. Maybe.’

She could find nothing to suggest otherwise.

Then a message request shone, high priority from Station Control, and Ro waved a holo open. A lean, grey-haired woman looked at Ro, eyes widening in surprise.

‘Excuse me?’ said Ro. ‘I believe
you
called
me.’

‘Yes ... But you look, um, different from the last time I saw you.’

‘I’m sorry? Have we met before?’

‘Actually, I held you in my arms. Half of me is surprised to see a strong, capable woman. The other half of me can’t get over how young you look.’

Ro did not want to get into a discussion of time-dilating voyages through mu-space. She was going to be in enough trouble anyway, in that regard.

‘Were you a friend of my mother’s?’

‘Eventually. But I heard you, before I ever met Karyn.’ The woman’s face dimpled, and the smile removed decades from her features. ‘My name is Dorothy Verzhinski. Forty-three years ago - objective - I was based on Metronome Station, in the Delta Cephei system.’

Ro wondered if the woman had undergone time-slowing travels of her own. Then she realized what Verzhinski was telling her.

‘You’re the one who picked up Mother’s distress beacon. Saved the both of us.’

‘If I hadn’t, someone else onboard would have heard you. Not just the auto-beacon, but the realtime audio channel: a baby wailing in deep space ... I’ll never forget that day.’

‘You’re the reason I was christened Dorothy.’

‘What? You don’t like the name?’

‘Let’s just say, there’s a reason why they call me Ro. But I am really pleased to meet you. I would love to come aboard, but only for a short—’

Verzhinski shook her head, looked off to one side as if reading a display.

‘Perhaps some other time. I’m happy to report, all your passengers have woken up
physically
healthy.’

‘But psychologically?’

‘Well ... It might be better for you to leave before Senator Margolis reaches a comms terminal. I’ll say that I informed you of their waking up OK. That should cover both our backsides.’

Ro grinned.

‘That’s another huge favour I owe you.’

‘Come back someday, and we’ll catch up. In the meantime ...’

‘Right.’ Ro concentrated, and her cabin displays rippled with system changes. ‘Thank you, Vachss Station. Ready to depart.’

‘Bon voyage,
Pilot McNamara. Vachss Station out.’

The comms-holo was gone.

‘Well, Claude. Looks like we’re going.’

‘No more strange signals?’

‘None that I can detect.’

‘Then,
mon amiral,
I would be grateful if I could see Labyrinth, just once before I die.’

‘In that case,
mon ami...
Labyrinth, here we come.’

Ro could have flown directly along a minimum-duration geodesic. But this was Claude Chalou, a Pilot grown too old to be entrusted by UNSA with an expensive mu-space vessel. A man who deserved more than a blind existence on Terra.

So Ro took him through crimson nebulae, across great tracts of golden light where no stars showed, and through a scintillating tree of fiery life whose rustles and whispers persisted in the ship’s cabin long after they had left the formation behind.

‘Ah, mon Dieu.’

All the beauties of the mu-space vastness, she showed him.

Then Ro turned her ship along a familiar trajectory, and a fractal universe slid past as they flew further and further from anything an unaltered human being would term reality.

The ship slowed, in a region filled with amber light where spiky black stars massed. In realspace, it would have been the centre of a galaxy; in this continuum, one might dive into lower dimensions that opened up entirely different features: endless sheets of blank golden space, or - conversely - dense bracketed spongiform blackness. In a sense, a ship might remain in one spot yet explore an infinite variety of surroundings for ever.

‘Is it here?’

‘Just around the corner.’

A twist, a ripple in the continuum which Ro navigated with skill.

And then a vast construction was hanging before them: silver and black, smooth and jagged, its complex architecture both self-similar and varying, in a geometry far beyond humanity’s ability to grasp.

‘It’s ...’ Chalou’s voice trailed off.

‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’

There were endless halls, some open to golden space. There were arches and towers and turrets, pointed in every conceivable direction, worked at every conceivable scale from mountain-sized to microscopic ... as near as such terms had meaning in this place.

Seven - no, eight - ships were visible, hanging before various portals. As Ro and Chalou watched, another ship slid from an opening surmounted with an impossible triangle - braided in perspectives that
almost
made sense - and arced away into the depths of mu-space.

‘Are Pilots living inside?’

‘Not permanently,’ said Ro. ‘Not yet. But there are those who spend more and more time here, not just helping with the construction, but resting and meditating among the Courts. It’s interesting ... Sometimes, you come across a square or a building that no-one claims responsibility for, as though it has come into existence by itself.’

‘Perhaps you have wrought more than you expected.’

‘Maybe.’ In the cabin, Ro patted his arm. ‘I think you’ve brought us the last matter compiler we’ll ever need. We’ve passed a critical point.’

‘You mean, the city’s growing by itself?’

‘It’s more than just a city.’

She urged the ship forward through amber space.

Closer. Chalou gasped at the detail.

Amid the infinite complexity that was Labyrinth, a welcoming portal opened. An event membrane slid over Ro’s vessel as they passed inside.

Into the only home a Pilot could require.

Walking in the space known as Hilbert Hall, they met another Pilot and exchanged greetings. Like Chalou, Pilot Sandberg wore a visor clipped across his metal eye sockets; Labyrinth shone with energies that resonated in just the right way for the visors to decipher.

‘I wonder, Admiral’ - Sandberg’s words formed ghostly shimmerings in the air, faded - ‘whether you perceive this place in quite the way we do.’

Ro looked around at the infinite planes which formed the Hall. Silver reflections slid across her obsidian eyes.