Authors: John Grant
Strider's Galaxy (12 page)
Without the Computer there was no way of telling. Even just two years out from Jupiter many of the familiar constellation shapes had become strangely distorted. Now it was obvious that they were a lot further from home than that: there was nothing remotely recognizable out there at all. Moreover, the starfield seemed unnaturally rich. It wasn't something you noticed at first; instead, it slowly dawned on both of them that there were rather too many stars around. And that more of them were red than they should be.
"Do you think we've ended up somewhere near the Hub?" said Strider.
"No, sweet light of my life," said Nelson slowly, a look of both horror and wonder spreading across his big face. "I don't think we're anywhere near the Hub."
She turned in her seat to follow his line of sight.
Visible through the stars, not quite edge-on to them, stretching over maybe thirty degrees of her field of vision, was something she'd thought she'd never see except through telescopes and in holos.
A spiral galaxy.
#
Neither of them spoke for several minutes as they took in the implications. The sight was beautiful: that was what Strider registered first. It was impossible not to feel awe. Although the galaxy was not the brightest object in the
Santa Maria
's sky, it possessed sheer beauty and massiveness that made it the most impressive thing she had ever seen. And it had a
reality
that even the holos produced by Hubble XVII could never hope to emulate. What stunned the senses most were the colors of it—little by way of structure could be seen from here. The colors of galaxies in holos always seemed artificial—and often enough they in fact were, having been deliberately enhanced for one reason or another. But the colors of the galaxy she was looking at were true ones. They seemed almost alive, even though they were motionless. Patches of blue and white and yellow predominated closer to where the
Santa Maria
seemed to hang; beyond, the hues shaded towards both red and a brighter blue, where the hub was. The hub itself was bigger than she'd expected: she'd always known that spiral galaxies were basically flat with a slight bulge in the center, but from this angle you could get a full appreciation of how large the bulge really was.
The second thing that she took in was the remoteness of the galaxy. The sheer distance chilled.
Finally she said: "I think we must have ended up in a globular cluster. That's our old friend the Milky Way over there."
"I think not," said Nelson quietly. "Globular clusters are almost all high above the galactic plane, and we're looking at this baby almost from the side. That's not the Milky Way at all, I reckon. I can try to find out."
She looked quickly at him.
He gestured towards his thighputer. "I have data on the Milky Way in here. I can get a screen view of what it should be like from this kind of location."
She turned back to look at the spiral. Even if the personnel of the
Santa Maria
died here, as far as she was concerned it would probably be worth it. This was the kind of sight that she had come into the SSIA
for
—knowing that it was something she'd never be able to see for herself, but at the same time getting part of the thrill that her distant descendants would experience when finally humanity advanced that far. Now she was doing the impossible—achieving her dream.
"Have you got information on the Andromeda spiral in that device as well?" she asked suddenly.
"It's the very next thing I'm going to check out, but I want to run these specs on the Milky Way first, just in case I'm wrong. You've got where I was thinking, huh?"
"Yeah. We're in an elliptical."
The Milky Way has two small, seemingly young satellite galaxies, both of them irregularly shaped: the Greater and Smaller Magellanic clouds. The Andromeda Galaxy has at least two satellite galaxies as well, but these are seemingly far further evolved than the Magellanic clouds: they have formed into tightly packed ellipsoids of closely clustered, redder, older stars. From the lesser of these two ellipticals it might just be possible that one could see the view that was confronting Strider right now.
"I can confirm it's not the Milky Way," said Nelson behind her.
"Thanks," she said absently.
A little while later he added: "And it's not the Andromeda spiral either. I've got the puter to do a search of all the galaxies it has on file to see if there are any that remotely match the parameters of this one."
"But you're not hopeful," she said.
"Who knows?" She could hear his jumpsuit rustle as he shrugged.
"Snap," she said.
#
"We encountered two fatalities between cabins one and twenty-two," said Strauss-Giolitto to Leander. "Lan Yi is currently resting in cabin twenty-seven. They had some painkiller there, and I was able to splint up his arm." What she didn't say was that the painkiller in question was marijuana. All forms of drugs—including alcohol, tobacco and, the one most argued about of all, ziprite—had been banned from the mission. They weren't in fact necessary. You could get a much higher high out of your stim socket than through a shot of ziprite, with the great advantage that you could snap out of your high at a moment's notice if necessary. The disadvantage was that stim dreaming was if anything more addictive. But someone had clearly smuggled aboard some dope seeds, and there must be a covert little plantation on one of the fields. Strauss-Giolitto felt it was her responsibility to report the matter to Leander, so she didn't. The
Santa Maria
's officers would know about it soon enough anyway: the switch into free fall and then back to 2g had deposited large sections of agriculture at the rear of the vessel. In the meantime, Strauss-Giolitto had partaken of a bite of hash cookie herself: she wasn't about to report the people who had very kindly given it to her. "He'll be all right," she said.
"Can you turn off that noise while I check out the rest?" said Leander, gesturing towards Lan Yi's cabin.
"I can try," said Strauss-Giolitto. "But I think Lan Yi's musibot has been specially programmed." This was a flat lie, and probably Leander knew it. If Lan Yi wanted to listen to distant Telemann as he suffered on his borrowed bed, Strauss-Giolitto was prepared to let him do so. He had probably saved several lives during the period of free fall: he deserved to be allowed to hear whatever racket he chose.
He deserved to be allowed to get as high as a kite without some petty demagogue like Leander butting in.
"Have you checked out the remaining cabins?" Leander was asking.
"Not yet. I was concerned about Lan Yi. Can you get the medbots moving yet?"
"Yeah, I guess so," said Leander. "They won't be able to do much, but . . ."
"We weren't able to do much either. We did our best. I want to be with the old guy. If it hadn't been for him . . ."
"I know," said Leander, holding up a hand. "You do that. Give him my love. I'll take over from here."
#
After a long time Nelson spoke.
"As far as this puter can tell," he said lazily, "we could have gone right to the other end of the Universe. I think we're in real trouble, sweet little lady from the old country."
"I knew we were in shit right from the beginning," said Strider. "Even if that
had
been the Milky Way, we've got no way of getting to it." She pushed back her spread fingers through her short hair; she was trying to cure herself of the habit, but without success. "We're stuck, Umbel. Fancy a spot of cannibalism?"
Their laughter was artificial.
WELCOME TO THE WONDERVALE,
said a voice in both of their heads.
The Images had arrived.
Part Three: Strider's Galaxy
1
The Images
Nelson and Strider looked at each other sharply. Neither of them said anything for a few moments.
"Did you just hear what I just heard?" It was Strider who finally broke the silence.
"Something about 'The Wondervale'?" said Nelson.
"Yeah." She touched her forehead. "Well, at least if we're going nuts we're doing it together."
"'The Wondervale' does sound like the name of some kind of mental institution," drawled Nelson.
YOU ARE WELCOME,
said the cool, silent voice,
BUT WE DO NOT KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
It seemed like a concatenation of voices speaking almost perfectly in unison, like several sopranos who had practiced together long and hard. It was filled with complex, interacting music, and yet it had a purity no single human voice could have attained.
Feeling foolish, Strider spoke towards the view-window. "We are employees of the Solar System Interstellar Agency." She hoped that whoever-it-was could get something of the meanings of her thoughts, rather than just her words. "We were conducting the Solar System's first interstellar investigative mission, voyaging towards Tau Ceti
II
, when we . . . got lost."
THERE IS NO NEED TO SPEAK WORDS, UNLESS YOU SO DESIRE,
reassured the voice.
WE ARE INDEED UNDERSTANDING THE MEANINGS OF YOUR THOUGHTS. YOU CAME THROUGH A WORMHOLE FROM YOUR GALAXY INTO OURS, WHICH IS CALLED THE WONDERVALE. YOURS IS CALLED THE MILKY WAY.
It paused, as if seeking to find a way of not sounding patronizing.
TERMS LIKE "SOLAR SYSTEM" AND "TAU CETI II" ARE MEANINGLESS TO US. MOST BEINGS NAME THEIR HOME SYSTEM BY A THOUGHT WHICH MEANS "SOLAR SYSTEM."
"I'll carry on speaking out loud, if you don't mind," said Strider. "You may be able to read my thoughts, but my friend here can't. I want him to know what's going on in this conversation."
We could try to link your minds, if you like.
She shook her head. "Later, maybe. Right now we've got enough to think about without trying to think each other's thoughts as well. If you know what I mean," she added.
It is understood.
She looked around the command deck, trying to work out where the voice was coming from. "Where are you?" she said. "Can't you show yourselves to us?"
We cannot. We are only fractionally a part of this Universe. You may be able sometimes to detect our presence visually or tactually. Insofar as we are in your reality at all, we are on your command deck with you.
"
Who
are you, then? Can you help us?"
May we read the entirety of your minds?
"Go ahead." In a way this seemed militarily an unwise choice, because for all she knew these creatures—if they were indeed creatures—might turn out to be humanity's deadliest enemies. On the other hand, she was reassured by the fact that they had asked permission of her: almost certainly they could have scanned her thoughts through and through without her being any the wiser. She grinned suddenly, wryly, remembering how in the old legends you'd been safe enough inside your home, but if you invited the vampire to come indoors . . .
She relaxed her body, straining to feel some mental sensation to betray what was going on.
There was this time quite a long pause. When the voice returned it sounded almost rueful.
THERE IS NO CONCEPT WITHIN YOUR CULTURAL BACKGROUND THAT IN ANY SENSE MATCHES WHAT WE CALL OURSELVES. AS TO THE NATURE OF OUR BEINGS, THAT IS SOMETHING BEST LEFT UNTIL LATER. BUT WE CAN HELP YOU. WE ENJOY HELPING PRIMITIVE CULTURES AS MUCH AS WE DO ADVANCED ONES.
Strider instinctively bridled at the "primitive" tag, but immediately untensed again. Humanity had been making its first attempt to reach the stars, having messed up its home patch. To creatures like these, who were clearly able to move through the interstellar tracts and even the dimensions with ease—how else could they have pinpointed the
Santa Maria
with such swiftness?—Strider and her kind must look as if they'd only just discovered how to make fire.
QUITE,
said the voice. There was not a hint of condescension.
"How can you help us?" said Nelson. His voice sounded a little punch-drunk.
The sense that the focus had shifted briefly from herself eased Strider's concentration momentarily, and she caught out of the corner of her eye a flicker of something that was very like light but was somehow different. She sat up straight in her chair.
CONGRATULATIONS, CAPTAIN LEONIE STRIDER,
said the voice ironically.
She waved a hand casually as if to say "Hi there." In fact, she was just beginning to feel terrified of these mental intruders. That flash of almost-light had brought home to her, even more than had her first sight of the majesty of the spiral galaxy through the view-window, that the situation she and the rest of the personnel of the
Santa Maria
had exploded into was
truly
alien. They were a
long
way from home.
WE CAN HELP YOU IN A NUMBER OF WAYS,
said the soundless voice mildly.
WE WISH TO, ALTHOUGH OF COURSE WE WOULD NOT DO SO WITHOUT YOUR STATED ASSENT. WE CAN PUT OURSELVES IN THE PLACE OF YOUR DEFUNCT CONTROLLING COMPUTER—OR WE COULD TRY TO REPAIR IT, ALTHOUGH IT SEEMS TO US THAT ITS MENTAL DETERIORATION IS SO PROFOUND THAT REPAIRS COULD BE ONLY PARTIAL. BESIDES, IT IS A FAR LESS SOPHISTICATED ENTITY THAN THE ONE WE CAN FORM FROM OURSELVES.
"You wanna be a
computer
?" Nelson expostulated.
NO. WITH A SMALL PORTION OF OURSELVES WE CAN PERFORM ALL THE FUNCTIONS OF YOUR DEAD COMPUTER: THAT IS A QUITE DIFFERENT MATTER. IT WOULD REQUIRE NO MORE OF OUR ATTENTION THAN YOU HAVE TO EXPEND ON KEEPING YOUR HEART BEATING.
This time the voice did sound genuinely bored, as if it were having difficulty crossing the culture gap.
Strider wasn't certain if she liked the idea of her ship being run entirely by unknown, unseen aliens. "Do you think you could, you know, sort of try to
repair
the Main Computer first?"
We could try.
The statement was so swift and so bald that she realized this was the last thing the creatures wanted her to ask of them.
"I think you're not being entirely honest with us," she said.
The words rushed into her mind so fast that she could hardly keep up with them:
IF WE FIX YOUR COMPUTER WHICH WE DO NOT THINK IS SOMETHING WE CAN DO YOU WILL STILL BE IN AN ANTIQUATED SPACE VESSEL WITH AN ANTIQUATED DRIVE UNIT FOLLOWING THE INSTRUCTIONS WHICH WE SHALL WILLINGLY GIVE YOU AS TO HOW YOU CAN REACH THE NEAREST PLANET YOU MIGHT FIND HABITABLE WHICH HAS NOT BEEN ALREADY COLONIZED, WHICH TRIP WILL TAKE YOU A TIME OF TWENTY-EIGHT OF YOUR YEARS ASSUMING YOUR SHIP IS NOT PICKED OFF BY MILITARY ACTION DURING THAT TIME AND IT ALMOST CERTAINLY WOULD BE. YOUR COMPUTER IS CAPABLE OF CONTROLLING ONLY THE TECHNOLOGY IT WAS BUILT TO CONTROL. IF WE CAN INSTALL OURSELVES IN ITS PLACE WE MAY THEN UPGRADE YOUR SHIP SO THAT IT HAS AT LEAST THE LEVEL OF TECHNOLOGY OF THOSE OF OTHER PHYSICAL SPECIES WHO POPULATE THE WONDERVALE. THIS WILL CERTAINLY BE OF CONSIDERABLE VALUE TO YOU AND YOUR CONTINUED PERSONAL SURVIVAL BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY IT MIGHT BE OF GREAT BENEFIT TO OTHERS OF THE WONDERVALE AND AESTHETICALLY TO OURSELVES WHICH IS WHY WE SO GLADLY OFFER TO YOU OUR SERVICES. BUT WE CANNOT
MAKE
YOU ACCEPT THOSE SERVICES.
"Upgrade the ship?" said Strider hesitantly. "How?"
YOUR DRIVE RESTRICTS YOU TO SUBLIGHT VELOCITIES.
Strider and Nelson exchanged glances. They could hardly believe what they'd just heard.
BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO MODE OF ACHIEVING TRANS-LIGHT VELOCITIES YOU ARE INCAPABLE OF AVOIDING WORMHOLES. ALSO, YOU HAVE NO DEFENSIVE WEAPONRY.
"Yeah," said Nelson, "you talked about military action before. Is there some kind of war going on?"
THE WONDERVALE IS A FIELD OF MANY WARS. IT IS VERY UNAESTHETIC. THIS GALAXY IS IN THE GRIP OF A TYRANNY, AND REBELLIONS ARE EVERYWHERE. WE WISH THAT THEY WOULD STOP.
"Whose side are you on?" said Nelson suspiciously.
WE ARE ON THE SIDE OF THE WARS' STOPPING, BECAUSE THEY OFFEND US. THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN UNTIL THE TYRANNY IS REMOVED. WE WOULD PREFER THAT THIS HAPPENED BY PERSUASION RATHER THAN WARFARE, BUT THE TYRANNY OF THE AUTARCH NALLA SHOWS NO SIGNS OF BEING OPEN TO PERSUASION.
Again Strider saw a motion of near-light at the very periphery of her vision. This time it didn't make the small hairs at the back of her neck twitch in protest.
"Tell us more about the upgrading of the ship," she said, waving Nelson to silence.
WE CAN RESTORE THE SMALL MOBILE COMPUTER FOR WHOM YOU HAVE SUCH FONDNESS, CAPTAIN LEONIE STRIDER,
the voice said.
THAT IS A TINY MATTER FOR US. WE CAN GIVE YOU AN ARTIFICIAL MARS-STANDARD GRAVITY WHATEVER THE ACCELERATION TO WHICH YOU SUBJECT YOUR SHIP, WITHIN CERTAIN LIMITS. WE CAN PROVIDE YOU WITH MORE SOPHISTICATED ASTROGATION THAN YOUR CULTURE WILL ATTAIN IN SEVERAL THOUSAND YEARS. BUT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING OF ALL IS WHAT WE HAVE ALREADY SAID: WE CAN REPLACE YOUR PRIMARY DRIVE WITH ONE WHICH WILL MOVE YOU BETWEEN THE STARS WITHOUT EACH VOYAGE TAKING SEVERAL OF YOUR DECADES. THE TACHYON DRIVE CAN—
"But there are no such things as tachyons!" said Nelson. "Shutzi Katanara proved it, way back."
The voice fell silent.
"At a quick guess," said Strider unhappily to the big man seated alongside her, "Shutzi was wrong. Once upon a time people proved that the Sun went round the Earth—remember?"
THE TACHYON DRIVE,
resumed the lilting voice-that-was-several-voices,
CAN TAKE YOU AT TRANS-LIGHT VELOCITY WHEREVER IT IS YOU WISH TO GO. BY THE VERY NATURE OF THE TACHYON DRIVE, ANY CRAFT POWERED BY IT IS IN NO DANGER OF FALLING INTO A WORMHOLE, AS YOU DID.
"Can it take us home?" said Strider.
NO. WE DO NOT KNOW WHERE YOUR HOME IS. WE WOULD SUGGEST THAT YOU ACCEPT, CAPTAIN LEONIE STRIDER, THAT FROM NOW ON YOUR HOME IS THE WONDERVALE.
#
It was hard to recognize what the command deck of the
Santa Maria
had become. The screens had vanished, and in their place were devices whose physics had been explained to the human beings but proved incomprehensible even to Lan Yi. The aliens had called the devices Cross-Reality Assimilation Pods, which was perhaps an accurate description of the way in which they worked but acronymized unfortunately; Strider was damned if she was going to spend the rest of her life sticking her head into CRAPs, and renamed the things Pockets. Because using them
could
be like delving into a pocket—often enough, the pocket of an old garment you hadn't worn for years, so that what you found was a mixture of reminders and items you had so long forgotten that they were in effect brand-new discoveries.
The displays of the Pockets looked from a distance as if they were straightforwardly holographic. Each Pocket—there were twelve of them, arranged in a neat curve around the front one hundred and twenty degrees of the command deck—was like a box mounted on another box. The lower box appeared to be solid, made of something resembling opaque grey plastite, although it adjusted its size automatically so that its upper surface was always at the waist-height of the user. It did so in a way that was inconvenient to watch: for fun, Leander had tried suddenly squatting down while making an observation, and had had to knock off duty for a couple of hours with a splitting headache. The top surface of this box was illuminated, displaying a constant stream of mathematical data and geometrical representations.
The upper box was the part of the Pocket which demonstrated just how far ahead of human technology the aliens had gone. For a start, the box itself was invisible, although you were aware it was there by the fact that any of the images it contained were cut off along fixed boundaries. Within this box you could call up three-dimensional representations of whatever it was you wanted to observe—within the limits of the aliens' knowledge and the ability of the human brain to comprehend what it saw. Through this image you watched, on the display surface of the lower box, the complementing data.
The mode of operation was deeply unhuman. There were no buttons to press, no keyboards on which to rattle. Instead, you leaned your head forward into the Pocket and
thought
about what it was you wanted to know. Then you retreated slightly, still keeping your head within the Pocket, and the display would hold until you changed it for something else.
At first, Strider had found the experience almost terrifying: it was as if she were being asked to stick her head blindly into the unknown, with every chance that the unknown had sharp teeth and strong jaws. Soon, though, she and the rest of her officers became accustomed to it. In times of idleness, the officers would enjoy themselves conjuring up fantastically detailed 3D images of the outer hull of the
Santa Maria
or—a special favorite—the spiral galaxy, which the humans had learned was known as Heaven's Ancestor. The image could be slowly rotated along any axis, so that at one moment you could be looking down on the full face of the galaxy and at the next you could be watching it from the edge-on angle at which Strider and Nelson had first seen it. You could also narrow the focus, seemingly almost infinitely, until you found yourself observing a single star. Finding a planet to look at was more difficult, but Nelson had by chance managed it once—disappointingly, it appeared to be only a little ball of sterile rock.
Observing planets within The Wondervale was easier, especially since the aliens provided guidance. An almost depressingly high proportion of them proved to be inhabited by technological species (
The Wondervale is a field of many wars
), although here the resolution of the Pockets broke down: the
Santa Maria
was currently too far from any star to be able to conduct a full surface scan of a planet—the smallest structures that could be seen were cities.
And,
thought Strider,
you can probably up your estimate of the number of advanced civilizations, because presumably some species don't build cities.