The Great Symmetry (5 page)

Unless he found a way to the moon’s surface, or one of the other stations or space colonies in the system, this was also going to be Evan’s highly scenic tomb.

Evan’s breathing system was an efficient rebreather, which scrubbed carbon dioxide from the air he breathed out, juiced up the oxygen to the required level, and then reused that air. Even so, he had just over eight hours of usable air remaining, as the suit had just informed him.

“Suit, please advise. Is there any achievable flight path leading to a survivable impact on Foray?”

“No. The available thrust is for attitude adjustment and very minimal maneuvers. We cannot leave the orbit of Foray.”

The answer had not changed from the last time he had asked, a few hours before.

By the numbers, it was crazy. He had escaped from the Aurora system and made it to Kelter. Counting the trip through the newly discovered glome, that was fifty-six light years. Over five hundred trillion kilometers. And now he lacked the means to make it across the last hundred thousand kilometers of space. Such a tiny distance, less than a billionth of what he had already traveled. Unattainable.

Evan had found out a lot about being in an EVA suit for more than an hour or two. For one, space is not so vast if you are stuck inside a suit. The claustrophobia came in waves, each peak worse than the one before. He had begun to contemplate simply peeling the suit off, just to be free of it for a moment until the hard vacuum took him.

Breathe.

His clothes had shifted and now had folds that rubbed against his side. His lower back itched. In theory, he could pull one of his arms out of its suit arm, and make adjustments. In practice, he didn’t dare. What if his arm got jammed part way in or out? He had started to try it once, a few hours ago, but could not make himself commit through the crux of pushing his hand through the narrow space under his armpit.

Breathe.

Evan had tried, many times over the past few hours, to leave a last message. For Kate. Each time the suit played it back, he had cringed, and ordered the message erased. What could he say that would mean anything in a message, recorded in the memory of an EVA suit, carried until some future day when his body was found?

Would she even care anyway? For all Evan knew, she had long since moved on, and a message would be an unwelcome surprise.

Calling for help. That was an option. It would probably work, at least in the sense of attracting attention. Most likely the wrong kind. It would be the last resort. If he got down to a few hours of air, then he would ask the suit to send an SOS to anyone who would listen.

When was the dividing line? Enough time to be sure that there was no hope otherwise, but some reasonable prospect of someone getting to him in time. If the warships didn’t simply dispatch a missile.

Maybe Mira was actually on Kelter and had received his message. Realized it was for her. Decoded it. Decided that it was worth lifting into space swarming with warships in order to see what was on the vector that he had supplied. And so she was coming for him right now.

Described that way, it didn’t sound so likely. Mira wasn’t his pilot any more. She didn’t owe him anything. When Evan had been provided with the research opportunity of a lifetime two years before, he had cast her off with little hesitation.

Evan had seen plenty of traffic go by, from the new glome emergence toward Kelter. Six warships had accelerated past, and then turned to decelerate in order not to hurtle past the planet.

He had instructed the suit not to use any active scans such as radar, but the suit was able to track the warships easily using a combination of visual sensors and passive radar detection. The other ships did not seem in the least bit concerned about being tracked.

If the Affirmatix fleet was indeed pursuing him, then there was one irony in that. Affirmatix, his expedition sponsor – former sponsor – had provided, at special order, the suit that he wore, and which might be saving him.

The suit was intended for conducting delicate scans for any signs of Versari artifacts, on the varied surfaces and caves of the asteroids in the Aurora system. To that end, it did not generate nor reflect any measureable amount of electromagnetic radiation, which would interfere with the scans. In practical effect, it was a stealth suit, and he was invisible to the ships.

Evan needed to pee, so he did. At least that part of the suit was working well.

He considered having another sip of water, but decided not to. Maybe later. Evan did his best not to think about the plumbing.

His suit had an outside zipper pocket. Evan pulled off his left gauntlet, revealing the thin inner glove. The gauntlet floated by its tether. It would stay nearby.

He unzipped the pocket and pulled out a small grey box. For a moment, he left it suspended in front of him. It was drifting, very slowly, away and down to the left. He reached easily to retrieve it, then engaged the catch to open it. The amber cube floated out.

A little vacuum wouldn’t harm the cube. For the last nine hundred thousand years, it had been just fine in the absence of air.

Evan delicately caught the cube between his index finger and thumb, and then placed it, as still as he possibly could, directly in front of his visor.

He supposed that he didn’t actually need the original any more. All of the information had been meticulously copied, even that which could not be understood. Which was most of it.

Still, the object was special. The Versari had not known that they were leaving this for him; a gift, across almost a million years.

The amber cube was turning, ever so slowly. It might make a complete turn in several minutes. The sunlight partly reflected and partly transmitted into the center of the object, lighting it within and on its surfaces. Evan thought he could see details inside, slowly shifting.

Sunlight, unlike the vacuum, probably was bad for it, or at least for what was stored within. Only its perfect location, deep within the asteroid in the Aurora system, had allowed it to be sheltered, not only from any kind of atmosphere, but from radiation as well.

It was poor curating to leave it out in the sun. But then, there was nobody around to reprimand him.

In an instant, he could swat it away, and it would never be found again. One cubic centimeter, in endless space.

Evan didn’t want that. It was his discovery, after years of searching. What a triumph, finally something of value from the Versari. It was worth all of the years away from home, scratching at any place that hinted of a Versari presence from a million years ago. Even Kate might allow that it had been worth something.

Evan’s hand was getting cold. He pulled the gauntlet back on, leaving the amber cube turning in front of him. Both he and the cube were hurtling through space at over ten kilometers per second, yet neither he nor the object appeared to be going anywhere.

Evan considered the object in front of him. Maybe he would have another try, at composing the message for Kate.

He really should send that SOS.

The Vector

From her branch at the top of the tree, Mira saw motion, coming closer. Hopefully it was Kestrel. He had pinged Mira just a minute earlier, and she had quickly climbed back up to wait for him.

She picked out hints of his shape and features. Tall, lean. Bare arms even in the cool night. Curly dark hair. Same blue shirt he had been wearing before.

Without a word Kestrel sat beside her on the branch, then put his arms around her. She felt him kiss her on the cheek. Then he held her close for a long moment.

“You were fortunate?” she asked.

“You and me both.”

“Just thirty minutes,” she whispered. “Must have been easy for you, to do it so quickly. I’m overpaying! Twenty thousand per hour!”

“But you are paying for years of learning,” he whispered back. “And for the very highest level of skill.”

“You are a great wonder. And handsome.” Mira nibbled his ear for a moment. He was
, at that, although unattainable. Still, they had their little game.

“Good luck,” he said in her ear. “Please be safe, as much as your light allows you to.” Kestrel began to unwind himself from her, and then he cast off from the branch.

He was not as graceful in the tree as she was. Close, she thought, but not quite.

Mira looked at the dim horizon, where stars met the blackness of the land. She was alone again.

Alone, and not just in her location in the tree. Kestrel had helped her, for a price. That was as far as he was going to go. She had other friends, but she would only trouble them if she really needed
to.

Mira was used to figuring things out for herself.

She felt for it and found it. In her right vest pocket the 10k was gone, and in its place, a card. The physical currency of the Untrusted Zone was often inconvenient, but at times like this it was perfect. Mira had what she wanted, as did Kestrel, with no record of the transaction.

Right there, at the top of the tree, she could pop it into her phone and read it. That was almost certainly a bad idea. She could take the phone offline. Again a bad idea. Just being offline could be the most telling signal of all. Even in the Untrusted Zone, these days. You never knew.

Fortunately, Mira had an answer. Back at her apartment she had a brick, sitting there for moments just like this. An old model, but it would do. She cruised down the tree and hoofed it home.

The walk was suddenly strange. She had to force herself to stay at a normal pace. Nothing was different. Nothing. She hoped she would not run into anyone she knew. Again, she was fortunate.

Inside her apartment, she locked the door and then fired up the brick and put the card into it.

Mira’s apartment was small, but it met her limited needs for the times that she was dirtside. A few cubic meters of privacy. When Mira had moved in, the landlord had advised her that the place would be as good as new if she slapped on a coat of paint. Mira hadn’t bothered
. Scuffs on the walls from the apartment’s prehistory, and a pale blue color that she certainly wouldn’t have chosen; these things didn’t matter.

These walls were not what confined her, these days. Rather, it was her own choices. To behave. Self-censor and self-regulate. The thought made her want to run down the middle of the busiest street in the Untrusted Zone, screaming.

It took just a moment to copy the file and decrypt it with her private key.

The result of the decoding was total gibberish. The key had not worked.

Momentarily, Mira was flummoxed. The message was for her. She was sure of it. Why flag the message for her attention if she couldn’t decode it?

And then she knew. Her private private key.
For some reason Evan had encoded the message using her hand-rolled public key, not the key she had published in the directories. It was a conceit to have a private private key, a silly thing that people do so they can feel like they are doing something special and secretive. Mira, caught up the independent spirit of the Untrusted Zone, had made hers as a teenager, and had closely guarded it ever since. One of the few people who knew of its existence was Evan.

Mira applied her private private key to the message.

And it was … a vector.

Not just any vector. She knew before she plotted it. It was the course and velocity, at a moment in time, of the ship Evan had been on. Before it had been blown up. Before he had been killed.

Why?

Why go to the trouble?

Because there was still something on that course and velocity.

She chose to use the keyboard instead of just telling the brick what to do. “How quaint,” she thought to herself, then typed, “Plot forward, extend vector eight hours.” A line appeared, heading directly toward Kelter, most of the way there. “The present moment.”
Entering orbit of Foray. “One more day.” Staying in orbit.

Right now, it was entering the orbit of Foray. Something. Evan had spent the last few minutes of his life figuring out how to tell her about it. There was a reason.

Mira was going to find out what that reason was. In his memory. Or perhaps it was something of value. Why had he chosen to do this as his time ran out? Mira would not be able to rest until she knew.

She would need a small shuttle. And she needed a cover, some plausible reason to go to orbit. She would think of something.

Suddenly, Mira had a lot to do.

The Cloud Readers

Sonia, Ravi, and Merriam were headed for the next security stop. The first was when they had prepared to leave the Affirmatix campus for orbit. By rule, they were supposed to leave behind any material or information that was proprietary to Affirmatix, and this was a problem because the entire purpose of their trip related to extremely sensitive data that they needed to bring along.

Somehow Sonia had kept her cool as the securitons grilled her, to the edge of accusation, about data that she had been expressly instructed by her wrangler to bring. Ravi had not kept it under control quite as well. Finally an intervention from Colin had cut the inquisition short.

Now they found themselves approaching a deep space station, where they would be checked once again.
While other spacecraft waited in a queue, their ship was being waved forward.

They were the only passengers on the small ship. A yacht, Sonia had decided. Featuring six suites beyond the crew quarters, it was extremely well appointed and provisioned. Few people ever left Alcyone, and those who did were important. Their spacious seats, although equipped with all of the required safety features,
provided the ultimate in luxurious comfort.

Sonia fiddled with a talisman that Simone had given her, for defense against space aliens. It was strange and disturbing to Sonia that her daughter possessed something resembling a gun, even a toy. She would have to ask Yvette about it when she got back. As carefully as they worked to maintain equity in parenting, Sonia was the one who was away more at her job. Far more. She often didn’t know what was going on at home.