Supergiant (Gigaparsec Book 2) (26 page)

“That’s it!” Roz disconnected so
she wouldn’t reveal secrets over the link as she talked to herself.

The language of the subbasement was
simple when viewed from the hub of the galaxy. No matter how turbulent, the
swirls appeared natural and reasonable from the center. There were many areas
that the universe didn’t mind them reaching. Those resonant points were easy to
predict. She had a list of a dozen around Salizar already. People, however,
viewed the world in three right-angled dimensions centered on
themselves
.
Crakik’s shorthand had been a way to bridge this gap so subbasement flows could
be stated in terms that people could recognize. She just didn’t know enough to
control the outcome or reverse the engineering to choose the inputs. What if
she didn’t try?

Computers didn’t find square roots
by any reasonable way. They looked up the closest answer on a table or used
Newton’s approximation for the first pass, calculated the error, and adjusted
about a dozen times to obtain the desired accuracy. Old artillery men did the
same thing to range their targets. She could do that with her problem. She
examined the list of natural destinations and picked the four closest to
Salizar that formed a three-dimensional box around the star. Roz used those
points to estimate what it would take to arrive at the desired destination
inside. By wiggling her inputs, she could find another cluster of exit vectors
in Salizar’s neighborhood. Then she could use the four closest results to feed
the next refinement.

Shortly after bedtime, Echo knocked
on her door. “Max wants to know if you’re angry. You didn’t call him tonight.”
When she pushed inside, she paled. “You left the pod.”

“Yeah. I needed my computer pad and
some actual paper. I stayed sterile and climbed back in.” Roz stared at the
hologram, trying to find other ways to make the search faster. “I’m sorry I’m
hogging the main processors. I’ll be done with this experimental run in a few
minutes.”

“This isn’t a generalized
solution.”

Roz winced. “Yeah. I wasn’t smart
enough for that. I settled for an engineering solution for now—close enough is
good enough and all that. If I don’t change any of the settings, I can run a
probability cloud of a dozen inputs through at once. That way, all the answers
for an iteration come out at the same time. We step about halfway toward the
solution with each cluster. To reach the desired accuracy will take about
thirty steps.”

“That’s ten days!”

Roz sighed. “I know. I’m working on
shortcuts to improve that. I’ve fed the Crakik equation back through itself to
combine two steps and eliminated 10 percent of the math operations. Much more
than that and I can’t fit everything on one screen.”

Tears streamed down Echo’s face.
Roz immediately apologized. “I’m sorry I took the easy way out. I’ll do
better.”

Echo practically tackled her with a
hug, unheard-of physical affection from a Magi. “You solved the Enigma!”

“Not exactly. I cheated. A dozen
builders with half the instructions are as good as one who has them all.”

“What?”

“Never mind. It’s a Bat-philosophy
thing.”

Echo kissed her. “My mate cracked
the subbasement! Tell me how everything works.”

Roz was breathless after the kiss
and had trouble thinking. Her neck and spine tingled. “In a little bit.” Max
needed to come home soon.

When Echo announced their destination and route a week
later, Roz and her mother approved immediately. Reuben agreed once they gave
him a high-level view of the successive-approximation trick. Kesh abstained.
“We’ll be too close to Babel for my liking, but if Max votes in favor, I won’t
fight it.”

With a majority in favor, Roz
prepared to make the jump the day her husband returned. They battened down the
hatches, secured the cargo, and prepared everyone for stasis.

After almost two weeks of medical
service, Max was exhausted and desperate to see another Human face. Deke
brought him back to the ship with the final payment from the colony. Alyssa had
planned a combination welcome-home party for Max and a farewell for Deke.

When Max appeared in the outer
ring, Roz hopped into his arms. “Ugh. You stink.”

He inhaled deeply. “You smell
fantastic. God, I’ve missed you.”

“You need a shower,” Roz insisted.

“Okay. Come with me to supervise.”
He practically dragged her to the showers.

The others congregated in the
common area, pretending not to hear the giggling, squealing reunion echoing off
the metallic walls.

Soon after, the couple sat at the
dining-room table, clean and highly polished. Max demolished his second piece
of cake as Alyssa asked, “So how are my daughter’s calves healing? She won’t
show us.”

“The new skin is flawless, but she
left the unit early. She might never have hair there again. She also neglected
her physical therapy.”

“Is that what took you two so long?
Toning exercises?”

Max inhaled a little cake at the
unexpected comment and coughed to clear the air passage. “I missed your cooking.
This is all great. Their food choices are pretty limited.”

“
I
was in no way trying to
influence your vote,” said Alyssa.

Roz blushed at the implication.

Max said, “I’m fine with the
destination you picked, but we need to adjust for some extra mass—another
passenger.”

Roz glanced around the table. “Who?
There’s nobody new. In fact, Reuben’s missing.”

“Reuben and I escorted the prisoner
directly to stasis,” said Deke.

“Prisoner?” asked Herb.

“It’s a long story,” Max began. “I
may have someone who can help with our loan sharks. When I asked who wanted to
be rescued from the colony, only one person did. Get this, he was in jail.”

“On a prison world?” Roz said. “How
bad is this guy?”

“Just a young malcontent. The Bats
claim he can get the Blue Claw Clan off our back, but we shouldn’t let him see
Kesh yet. Contact with a Saurian might set him off prematurely.”

Roz asked, “Did the prince deputize
you to transport this desperado?”

“Better. Feeveerkahn made the guy a
special ambassador and gave our triad royal commendations for service. He also
gave me some secret mail to distribute.

Deke said, “I wouldn’t let this
fellow out of leg irons when he rode up here, but then again, I’m very
protective of my blade.”

Rolling her eyes, Roz said, “I’ve
apologized a hundred times for that.”

“Three hundred years without an
incident, and in one day, you totaled it,” Deke replied, ribbing her some more.

She hugged him anyway. “Peace. I
think I’ve made up for the scratch. Have a big family and a long life.”

Deke’s voice broke as he said, “My
thanks to you for all of the above. The prince hired me at your word. You
really impressed him.”

“He’s never met an adversary
before?”

“You’re a woman who took out an
assassin with a laser turret. They said you did it by plugging the barrel with
your pistol?”

“What can I say? On this ship, we
call that Tuesday,” Roz said.

Deke bowed. “I learned from all of
you on this vessel, but from you I learned the power of kindness toward
strangers. If I am half the giver you are, they will name me a saint.” He
handed her a cloth-bound book. “It is poor repayment, but this is a collection
of Bat children’s stories. My mother read these to me. I offer them as a
blessing to your children, both Jeeves and those yet to come.”

“I have a small gift for you, too.”
She handed him a holo cube.

He fiddled with it for a moment.
“This is cracked and won’t play.”

“It’s the surveillance recording of
you and a certain female in the fur storage area.”

The others looked puzzled, but Deke
roared with laughter. “I will miss you, Shiraz Ellison.”

****

Once the shuttle departed, the Human crew continued to
celebrate the success of their missions until the last moment. However, a
thought lingered in the back of Roz’s mind—that she might never see her parents
again if the jump failed.

Reuben never showed up to the
party, so Max went looking for him. Roz tagged along because she didn’t want to
be separated from her husband again so soon. They found the Goat sitting beside
the stasis unit with a drink bulb. He stared at Ivy’s motionless face and took
another swig. “Roz, thanks for saving her.”

“It was a team effort. Max
stabilized her, and the bridge crew scooped us up in orbit. You secured her in
stasis in record time.”

Reuben looked downward. “Our last
night together, I said some pretty vile things to her.”

“I doubt that was a one-sided
argument.” Roz put an arm around him. “She picks fights when people get too
close to her. It’s a defense mechanism.”

“The last time I’ll ever get to
speak to her.” Reuben took another swallow of something vile smelling. This
wasn’t quality bourbon. This clear liquid came from Max’s potato-peel still.
She only used that stuff to clean axle grease off her hands.

“Nonsense,” Max replied. “She’ll be
good as new. Laurelin has medical science we’ve never heard of.”

“Once she gets out of the hospital,
they’ll retire her to the breeding pool.”

Roz snatched the bulb of moonshine
out of his hand. “She has to serve seven years active duty before she can
retire. Besides, we’re all so important now that they have to send her to keep
an eye on us.”

“Ivy and I argued because MI-23
ordered me back to headquarters, and I refused. When I chose Ivy over Mnamnabo,
her boss recalled her. I just wish I could talk to her for one more hour.”

Max shook his head. “Sorry. She’s
in too much pain to be lucid. If I increased the drugs, her blood pressure
would be too low.”

“Not even a couple minutes?” Reuben
begged.

“If we could manage that,” Roz
said, “we’d have Ivy send the drive equations to the academy of sages on the
Magi home world.” She couldn’t transmit this information by the planet’s
ansible because the Bankers would keep the information for themselves and kill
off anyone who got close to the invention again.

Max whispered, “Frankly, I’m
shocked she made it to the ship alive.”

“Nobody disobeys
la
Generala
,”
Reuben joked.

“I’m asking you to socialize with
the rest of us,” Roz said. “In a couple hours, we’re about to risk our lives on
my latest bailing-wire implementation.”

Reuben reclaimed his drinking bulb.
“I’d rather finish my conversation with Ivy.”

Roz checked the time. “I’ll
complete your checklist and put Jeeves away. Then we’re dragging your butt to
the party.”

“I thought you froze the little guy
already,” Max said.

“I didn’t have the heart. He’s
terrified of the food stasis units. Last time someone put him in one, he lost
his family and Saurians tried to eat him. He actually ran away from me.”

“Maybe if I put Kesh into cold
sleep first, Jeeves will feel less threatened.”

Reuben said, “I worked with the
mimics for months. If I put him in storage, can I skip the party?”

“Sure.” Max clapped him on the
back. “But you need to secure yourself by jump time. Echo said no one can be
awake outside the mirrored sphere.”

“I don’t get jump sickness like Roz
did, and I’m sedated,” Reuben said.

“This is an order of magnitude
faster,” Roz replied. This wouldn’t be like swimming in a pool. It would be a
cliff dive into the ocean.

The three split up to handle
last-minute preparations for the new, improved subbasement trial. Once Roz
double-checked everything about the drive system, she triple-checked it.
If
we don’t make this, an entire civilization will never achieve its goal.

She didn’t have time for grief. She
only spoke to Reuben briefly after he suspended Alyssa and Herb. “You took care
of Jeeves?”

“He’s next on my list,” Reuben
snapped.

Roz was distracted by literally
putting out a fire. When she powered up one of the new control systems, one of
the nearby warning signs heated up sufficiently to burst into flames. She was
pushing buttons faster than she thought possible.

Ten minutes later, Roz checked on
Reuben. His badge was stationary and unresponsive in the stasis room. She
confirmed by asking Echo, “Any signs of aura activity on the cargo level?”

“Negative. All systems go.”

Roz stood at the master console and asked Max for
confirmation on one of the settings.

He replied, “I don’t understand a
tenth of this. I’ll record everything, and you two will get the kudos for the
achievement.”

“You work the secondary systems for
us,” Roz said. “Turn off power to all non-essential systems. Reduce heat and
gravity to a minimum.”

“Turning off the lights before we
leave the solar system,” Max said.

Roz hesitated with her finger over
the button for a long time. “Charging quantum capacitors.”
No turning back
now.
As the charge built, she could feel her special senses creep in around
the edges. Phantom spots shimmered at the corners of her vision. “Get me an EEG
strip. We need to monitor my brain activity during the dive.”

Max dashed off to grab the gadget
from his bag. Movement spun off in several directions and caused tracers.

She covered her mouth. “And
Dramamine.”

Over the intercom, she heard a
plaintive wail. “Chilly. Mommy. Chilly.”

“Jeeves!” Roz said in horror. Born
in a tropical climate, the mimic hated the cold. “I trusted my baby to a
drunken Goat? What sort of mother am I?” She unstrapped, but Echo put a hand on
her arm.

“You can’t leave the bubble of our
reality. We take it with us into the deep for a reason. Outside of it, our
standing waveforms would not survive without the reinforcement of stasis.”

Roz broke free. “I still have
time.”

“I locked the lift down already.”
Max turned on cameras and minibots. “If Reuben didn’t catch him, there’s a
reason. Give me a minute.”

The Goat appeared on the screen in
front of Ivy’s stasis bay, surrounded by a puddle of vomit. He wore Ivy’s
psi-blocking helmet, which explained his temporary lack of aura.

“Is he trying to kill himself?” Roz
asked angrily. “Too bad the fire suppressants aren’t water, or we could wake
him up.”

Max flipped a couple switches. “If
I remember right, the sonics I installed for the Bats gave Reuben a serious
headache.” A sound wave appeared at the corner of Max’s console, and he turned
the volume to the maximum.

On camera, Reuben sat up, holding
his ears.

Disabling the sonic defense, Max
spoke into the intercom. “Reuben and Jeeves, come to the central elevator shaft
immediately.”

Roz rebroadcast with her Bat
translator so Jeeves would understand. By then she had placed the elevator in
maintenance mode, which sent the elevator car to the top and opened the doors
on all levels. She had discovered this mode earlier when she needed to weld
inside the tube. In the low gravity, she climbed the emergency ladder to the
top of the dome to peek onto the cargo level.

“Are you insane?” asked Max from
below.

“If the world gets too wild, I can
drop to safety,” Roz insisted. “I can also drag others with me.” She balanced
at the edge of the protected zone, waiting.

Echo said, “We have the security
feed, but tell us what you see.”

Roz blinked to focus better. “The
new walls are flickering a little.”

“The results of recent choices,”
Echo said.

“Open the airlock to the jungle and
turn on the lights.”

When Echo did so, Roz saw phantom
bushes and trees at various stages of growth.

Reuben staggered into the security
chamber as if a dozen films were playing simultaneously, each just a little
different in distance and timing. On the whole, though, she could pretend that
the darkest overlap was reality. Speech was just as confusing, with minor
variations like a congregation reciting their creed. If she filtered out the
outliers, she could make sense of the crowd. “The little guy didn’t make it?”

“The plants are shifting. He might
be lost or afraid.” She saw the young Goat the way Ivy once described, with his
forked probability tree. On one half, he was a statesman and the other a street
bum. This moment was somehow pivotal, the crucial choice. She hated him for
being responsible for Jeeves’s plight. If she saved Jeeves or died in the
attempt, Reuben would never be able to respect himself again. But if he saved
Jeeves, he could make up for his drunken behavior. Steeling herself, she chose.
“Please rescue him.”

Reuben’s cloud didn’t hesitate. He
dove into the flickering jungle.

Over the intercom, Roz said, “Alls
in free, Jeeves. If you can’t get to the inner door, find Reuben. Follow my
song.” As loud as she could in the hall, she sang his favorite nursery rhyme.

Reuben joined in the chorus, his
slurred words making it sound like a rebellious rock song. Soon, he said, “I
see several mimics. Which one do I catch?”

“All of them,” Roz said. “As many
as you can.”

He sang and gathered until the
jungle flickered like green flames. Too many changes too fast.

“We’re in too deep. Run back now!”
Roz shouted.

When she saw the Goat, his dust
cloud was blurred but stable. In fact, the copies of Jeeves in his arms grew
more solid the longer he held them. Was this part of his psi talent? Did he put
people in touch with their alternates so the entire quantum cloud could be
explored for an answer?

Wisps of black smoke trailed from
his heels as he ran. The biozone and everything changeable began to evaporate,
leaving only the constant walls. Light sequences unified into a gray blur.
“Can’t see the door,” Reuben said, his voices more unified.

Holding out her arms, she willed
him to succeed. Her fingertips flared bright yellow. As she looked out at the
growing expanse, she realized that the answers to the Enigma were out there. In
the undergirding of the universe, she wouldn’t need to build millennia of math
or centuries of starships. She could see the answer firsthand. The only thing
that kept her anchored was the fact that Max waited for her. “Come to the
center where it’s solid.” When Reuben was close enough, she grabbed him by the
legs and pulled both down the rabbit hole.

Once their group hit bottom, Max
dragged them inside and closed the mirrored door behind.

Reuben panted. His slotted, golden
eyes were bloodshot from panic and alcohol. The bright light in the inner
sphere made him squint.

“You did great,” she encouraged,
lifting Jeeves out of his arms.

Reuben gasped out, “Doma Isolchar
stopped me in the hall. I saw him.”

“The ancient Phib governor you
questioned?” Max said. “He blames you for his death?”

“He wanted to talk about poetry in
Earth music!” The Goat seemed more disturbed by the lack of antagonism.

“What you saw was a faint
probability resonance,” Echo said.

Roz wrinkled her forehead. “People
who died here leave imprints?”

“Past and future grow closer the
deeper we plunge.”

“Right. Were the mimics in the
jungle alternates of Jeeves or ghosts of the murdered mimics?”

“Perhaps any of the proper—” Echo
cut off with a choked cry.

The pressure escalated in Roz’s
head as if several Magi were trying to force their way in. Her old partners?
Were they trying to pull her to them? “Everyone join hands.” It was all about
the connections. Trust. Love.

The five of them linked hands to
weather the hurricane. Her first journey through the subbasement was supposed
to last three days, taking them the same distance as a month-long star jump. To
those at the center, their time in the deep passed between one breath and the
next.

****

When the ship emerged into normal space, Roz blinked. The
navigator room was eerily silent. “Did something malfunction?”
Crap, we
don’t have enough fuel to do this again.

Reuben appeared to have passed out,
either from intoxication or the stress of the deep jump.

Echo whispered, “Minder, current
position?”

“Salizar B system.”

As Roz stumbled over to the
controls, Jeeves’s bulk around her neck felt heavier than before. “We made it.
We used more fuel than expected. Good thing we had extra.” She grinned and
addressed the room. “We did it!”

She spun in a circle, hopping, and
kissed Jeeves on the forehead. “We’re going to be famous, honey.”

Jeeves frowned, furrowing his
wrinkles deeper. Her earbud translated the words he spoke in the Bat language.
“Who will sing for my friends and siblings in the Hidden Forest?”

Roz was shocked by the mimic’s
suddenly articulate speech. “Do you mean the place you came from before the
Saurians captured you?”

“Yes. Your song led me to a safe
place. Who will sing for them so they can be warm and full and happy?”

The mimic’s home world was full of
creatures who would be exploited, hunted, and eaten until someone stood up for
them. She turned to Max. “When’s the next Convocation of Souls?” The
interspecies gathering was similar to a meeting of the Anodyne Senate, where
they debated new laws and other important matters affecting the Union.

“Um … Some time later this year.”

“Who is hosting?”

“Why?”

“Because Jeeves is going to
petition to be heard by the committee on sentient affairs. He’s going to ask
for protection on behalf of his people. He’ll sing for the living and the
dead.” Powerful people would resist, but Roz would make it happen.

“Sing, sing!” Jeeves said
excitedly. “Do I need to rhyme?”

“No, honey. Just tell the truth to
some important people, but we’ll be right behind you.”

###

This story will continue in Gigaparsec book three, “Union of
Souls.”

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