Beyond Heaven's River (15 page)

Beyond Heavens River

Twenty-Six

Direct excerpt from the tapas records of Yoshio Kawashita. Translated from the Japanese by Language Program (Trevor) — 1360-C Twentieth.

Married. Almost trivial, four hundred and some years old, recording a marriage. Married before, seven times, but to people who didn’t exist. I know the institution, but through the distortions imposed by divine spirits.

Married to Anna Sigrid Nestor, strong, loving, fragile. Like jumping off a cliff. Beneath the dome, I was never nervous about being married, any more than an actor on stage. What was I committing myself to? But now I can choose to let my time run short — to die. A marriage can take up a substantial portion of the rest of my life — perhaps all of it. For Anna it was a nervous time, too. Between us we sweated lakes. Slurred our speech. Laughed at our mistakes. Some cried with Anna. Some laughed with me when I delivered my lines in suddenly broken English, as though I’d forgotten.

Married in the cargo bay, by an interdenominational minister. License witnessed by thePeloros Testament as legal counsel for the ship, under supervision of three human lawyers; these signed our license. Belong to no country; our legal obligations are minimal. Things are much simpler this way. Any children — natural or, more common,ex utero  — are automatically entitled to a percentage of our holdings equal to the number of children, divided into half of the estate, subject to legal alterations by our personal Testament programs. Are other ramifications from common law, but have no place here.

After the ceremony and hours of celebration, Anna took me aside and suggested it was time to begin the honeymoon.

And so we did.

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Beyond Heavens River

Twenty-Seven

The next wake-period, thePeloros announced its presence in the Delta system of the Ring Stars. Anna assigned Kawashita as a second officer aboard a lander, and Kondrashef acquainted him with exploration procedures.

Call signals from four hundred other ships were logged in the first week. Among them was her father’s flagship. Arrangements for a meeting were made, and the two warper ships docked in stellar orbit. Visitors, luxury supplies, and news not available through general transmissions were exchanged. Then, without announcement or ceremony, Donatien Nestor came aboard thePeloros . Anna met him at the makeshift visitor’s station in the lander bay.

He was a tall, lean man, with powerful features that reminded Kawashita of some of the armor masks he had worn — a sharp, hooked nose, eyes inclined upwards at the sides, thin lips which, in a smile, always seemed to have the advantage of you. He gave Anna a peremptory hug, congratulated her on being among the first to arrive, then turned to Kawashita.

“Is this our long-lived new family member?” His voice was mellow, mid-ranged, pleasant. He held his hand out, and Kawashita clasped it firmly. Donatien’s grip was light and unassuming. The Japanese bowed, and he returned the bow, but with a diffident look to one side. “You have quite a history. Unfortunate it was interrupted.”

“I’ve lived a great deal longer because of that,” Kawashita said.

“Anna.” Donatien hugged his daughter again, still with some reserve, as if unsure exactly what to do.

“I’ve missed you, Father,” she said.

“We’ve missed you, too. Much work was done, however. I hear you’re doing well.”

“Very well. Yoshio and I think we can afford to take a few years off after we’re done here. We plan to travel around for a while — as tourists.”

“Never done that, myself,” Donatien said. “Probably never wanted to. Kawashita-san, how do you get along with my strong-willed offspring?”

“Very well,” he said.

“Remarkable. Not a bit of accent. You seem to be adjusting.”

“I’ve had a long time to prepare.”

“So you did. Are there refreshments, a place to relax for my party? Anna, this is my domestic partner, Julia Horsten” — a tall, thin woman, almost skeletal around the wrists and ankles but smoothly filling out around hips and breasts —“and your half brother, Marcus.” The boy was about ten years old, sandy-haired, and husky. He smiled politely.

“You flew airplanes?” Marcus asked.

Kawashita nodded. “A long time ago.”

“Sunk aircraft carriers?” the boy pursued.

“More sinned against than sinning,” he answered, shaking his head.

“The social side is what I’m here for,” Julia said, peering around the lander bay like an exceptionally dignified deer. “But I’m sure Donatien wants to discuss partnerships and pacts.”

“Partly. Anna, is your sensory equipment as good as I think it is?”

“Father, we’re on different pledge-sheets now.”

“So we are. Is she breaking you in, Yoshio, or are you on a different pledge-sheet, too?”

“We are communal, I believe.”

“Totally,” Anna said. “But Yoshio has his own fortune. He doesn’t rely on me …” She interrupted herself, unsure the implication had even been made. Then she called DiNova from the shrouded sensor equipment waiting to be loaded onto the lander and introduced him to the family. “Jason knows more about the ship than I do, and he’s probably dying to talk business, but he’s even more interested in escorting a beautiful lady and fine young brother around thePeloros . Correct?”

DiNova nodded with studied enthusiasm. Julia looked at him with a faint air of disdain but took his proffered hand and told Marcus to come with them.

“Very good,” Donatien said. “I assume you have the special sensors ready — you’d be foolish not to use them, and you’re no fool. Daughter, this isn’t going to be as important a find as some people think. Do you have that feeling?”

Anna cocked her head in query.

“I’ll give you some free information. None of the matter in the three systems we’ve scanned has been altered in the least. The supernova cloud appears to have an unusual hyperfine structure, but there doesn’t seem to be any correlation between that and the probability distortion.”

“If we’re exchanging data, Father, I don’t have anything to offer in return.”

“Not at all. What I’m saying is, the evidence will have to be purely artifactual. Nothing subtle seems to have changed.”

“Except the Alpha star itself.”

They began to walk around the perimeter of the lander bay. Anna kept edging them away from the shrouded equipment packages. “Purely a natural event. Despite what the Aighors say, I think they had something to do with it.”

“They didn’t,” Kawashita said.

“Oh?” Donatien looked at him with a challenging smile. “What do you think, Kawashita-san?”

“The Aighors are brilliant, if Anna’s library is accurate, but they aren’t secretive in the least. Their claims about the Ring Stars show nothing but their willingness to take advantage of a mystery.”

“True,” Donatien said. “They’re not known for human honesty. Their idea of truth varies considerably from ours.”

“I think the Perfidisians were responsible.”

Donatien nodded. “Either way, artifacts will be the only things left behind.”

“There won’t be any artifacts of value if they were Perfidisians,” Kawashita said.

“You’re correct there, of course, but theif exists. Anna apparently thought the risk was worth it. I do, too. So the chase is on?”

“I was hoping we could relax for a while,” Anna said, “without discussing business.”

“Sorry,” Donatien said. “I’ll leave Marcus and Julia here for the socializing. I have to be back as soon as possible.”

“No,” Anna said, smiling coldly. “No spies, no hindrances, Father. They leave when you do.”

“They’re lambs,” he said. “Total innocents.”

Anna laughed. “Different pledge-sheets, Donatien. You’re welcome to stay awhile, all of you. If you want.”

“The race is on. There are sixteen chunks of rock in this system, fourteen in Gamma, three in Epsilon, and one remaining in Alpha. I’ll see every one as soon as possible and sweep them as thoroughly as I can.”

“Luck to you, then,” Anna said.

“Are you up to her, lad?” Donatien asked, looking over his shoulder at Kawashita. He turned and held out his hand.

“Someday you will ask whether she was up to me,” Kawashita said without expression, shaking his hand with a matched light pressure.

“Perhaps. If Mr. DiNova will roust Julia and Marcus, we’ll be off. Thanks for the time.”

“Not at all,” Anna said. “Relatives, even if on different sheets.”

“Certainly.”

They left as quickly as they’d come, and with as little ceremony. Kawashita followed Anna to her cabin. She paced aimlessly for a few minutes, then allowed a few tears. “He wouldn’t even stay an extra hour,” she said.

“He’s a strong man.”

“Oh, I could stand it if he were just a strong man, a good businessman. But I have this cursed, old-fashioned notion that families are supposed to be loyal to each other, not to pledge-sheets.”

“You mentioned them first,” Kawashita said.

“Because I know my father. Donatien would try to seduce an angel if he thought it would increase a voyage’s profit margin. Well, I think he’s on the wrong track, Yoshio. I still love him, but I’m going to teach him a lesson. We’re not looking at chunks of rock. I’m going to examine the old forbidden zone and see what there is to see.”

“Wrecks,” he said. “Scattered debris.”

“Exactly. Whatever happened here, it spent its force outward, and it was long gone by the time Alpha blew.” She rang up DiNova and delivered her instructions. “Turn all sensors to the old boundaries, and give us a short warp out there. We’re going to gamble a bit.”

There were thirty physicists aboard thePeloros, each with a specialty, all the specialties adding up to a well-integrated whole. When the new sensors were deployed, they began a patient search for things much finer than needles in haystacks, or individual sand grains on a beach — the remains of spacecraft intercepted by the Ring Stars probability disrupters.

They listened for the dim emanations of atoms that had been violently shunted between closely similar universes. The sphere of disruption had had a radius of twenty-five light-years from the orbital center of the Alpha and Beta components; since the frequency of remains increased inversely with the distance from the center, the best concentrations would be found inward from that, if any still existed.

Nothing was found in the first week. Yoshio tried to comprehend the scale of the search, calculating on his tapas the volume to be covered. Since the physicists considered it unlikely that any debris would have been released within a radius of twenty light-years, the volume was reduced — only about 2.7 x 1043cubic kilometers. He shook his head and grimaced.

In the second week, further reducing the search volume by following the complex curves of warp exit points for vehicles from major known civilizations, they found a three-ton mass of slightly radioactive scrap metal. There was no clear indication of its source, and though it had been through a disruption, it could just as well have been an asteroid used for target practice. Nevertheless it was taken aboard, examined, and stored.

At the end of the first month everyone was tired and the search was slowing. Reports from ships in the first three systems being studied indicated nothing had been found there, either. DiNova, looking at the energy budget and schedules for possible projects in other areas, made his first suggestion that thePeloros should return to regular duty. Anna ignored him.

Kawashita finished his training on the lander and began taking instruction from DiNova on Nestor’s personal economics. This was harder for him than most of the technical and scientific material. Despite his work with early Japanese economics under the dome, as adviser to theShogun Yoritomo, he had little acquaintance with the art. DiNova instructed him well but somewhat impatiently. Neither was very impressed with the other.

Kawashita then took a turn at standing low-activity bridge watches. His first fitness reports, compiled by the ship’s second officer and delivered to Kondrashef, gave him high marks. The work reminded him of the long nights on theHiryu when he had stood on the bridge with the flight officer, waiting for dawn. In deep space there was no dawn, unless he counted the distant torch of the Alpha component in one of its last shows of glory, now twenty years old.

In the sixth week a tiny chunk of debris was located. To confirm the trace, all the ship’s equipment was shut down for ten minutes and the sensors were subjected to a rigorous cool-down. The trace remained.

“It measures at a kilogram mass, two hundred thousand kilometers from us,” the leader of the search team reported when Anna came to the bridge. “The trace is very weak, and it seems to be fluctuating, declining at the moment. We may not be able to find it if we move closer —”

“Or even if we stay here,” Anna said. “Keep track and send a lander after it. Coordinate — have we got equipment mounted on a lander? What are you using?”

“Virtual particle disruption with subsequent production of —”

“Which lander can match it?”

“Four.”

“If we can’t find it within five days, tell Mr. DiNova he can lay in a course for Bayley’s Ochoneuf.” She sighed. “I’m tired. A new bride shouldn’t be so tired, should she?”

The leader grinned. “Depends.”

“Think about putting yourself on report for flippancy, and let me know what you decide,” Anna said, turning to leave the bridge.

“Yes, ma’am.”

The lander was loaded with retrieval robots and launched from the bay an hour later. Slowly, like an animal stalking prey much smaller than itself, the lander nudged itself across the distance, deploying its finest sensors. The robots went out into the silent dark, special dampers muting their electrical interference.

Kondrashef and DiNova joined the team leader on the ship’s bridge. “We’ve got it,” he said when the indicators came on. “One and a half kilograms. They’re bringing it back.”

Most of the ship’s crew and at least a third of the entourage gathered in the cargo bay as the retrieval robot was wheeled in on a cart. It produced a transparent package like a proud mother.

“Looks like a piece of something larger,” Kondrashef said, touching the capsule with one finger. “The edges look abraded, perhaps by contact with other debris in a small cloud.”

“Ship’s store memory has a source, sir,” an attending sphere said.

“Oh?” Anna said. “Where does ship’s store think it comes from?”