Alastair Reynolds: The Six Directions of Space

My arm was sore from the jolt, as if it had been almost pulled from its socket.

“That is all I can do for us now,” Muhunnad said. “Running is our only effective strategy, unfortunately.

Our weapons would prove totally ineffective against the enemy, even if we could get close enough to fire before they turned their own guns on us. But running will suffice. At least we have the mass of one less lifeboat to consider.”

“I still don’t quite get what happened. How did you know there’d still be one lifeboat that was still working? From what I saw, we came very close to losing all of them.”

“We did,” he said, with something like pride in his voice. “But not quite, you see. That was my doing, Ariunaa. Before the instant of the attack, I adjusted the angle of orientation of our hull. I made sure that the energy beam took out five of the six lifeboat launch hatches, and no more. Think of a knife fighter, twisting to allow part of his body to be cut rather than another.”

I stared at him in amazement, forgetting the pain in my arm from the sudden onset of acceleration. I recalled what Qilian had said, his puzzlement about the ship twisting at the onset of the attack. “You mean you had all this planned, before they even attacked us?”

“I evaluated strategies for disposing of our mutual friend, while retaining the ship. This seemed the one most likely to succeed.”

“I am… impressed.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Of course, it would have been easier if I had remained in the harness, so that we could move immediately once the pod had departed. But I think Qilian would have grown suspicious if I had not shown every intention of wanting to escape with him.”

“You’re right. It was the only way to convince him.”

“And now there is only one more matter that needs to be brought to your attention. It is still possible to speak to him. It can be arranged with trivial ease: despite what I said earlier, I am perfectly capable of locking on a tight beam.”

“He’ll have no idea what’s happened, will he? He’ll still think he’s got away with it. He’s expecting to be rescued by the Mandate of Heaven at any moment.”

“Eventually, the nature of his predicament will become apparent. But by then, he is likely to have come to the attention of the Smiling Ones.”

I thought of the few things Muhunnad had told us about our adversaries. “What will they do to him?

Shoot him out of the sky?”

“Not if they sense a chance to take him captive with minimal losses on their own side. I would suggest that an unpowered lifeboat would present exactly such an opportunity.”

“And then?”

“He will die. But not immediately. Like the Shining Caliphate and the Mongol Expansion, the Smiling Ones have an insatiable appetite for information. They will have found others of his kind before, just as they have found others of mine. But I am sure Qilian will still provide them with much amusement.”

“And then?” I repeated.

“An appetite of another kind will come into play. The Smiling Ones are cold-blooded creatures. Reptiles.

They consider the likes of us—the warm, the mammalian—to be a kind of affront. As well they might, I suppose. All those millions of years ago, we ate their eggs.”

I absorbed what he said, thinking of Qilian falling to his destiny, unaware for now of the grave mistake he had made. Part of me was inclined to show clemency: not by rescuing him, which would place us dangerously close to the enemy, but by firing on him, so that he might be spared an encounter with the Smiling Ones.

But it was not a large part.

“Time to portal, Muhunnad?”

“Six minutes, on our present heading. Do you wish to review my intentions?”

“No,” I said, after a moment. “I trust you to do the best possible job. You think we’ll make it into the Infrastructure without falling to pieces?”

“If Allah is willing. But you understand that our chances of returning to home are now very slim, Yellow Dog? Despite my subterfuge, this ship is damaged. It will not survive many more transitions.”

“Then we’ll just have to make the best of wherever we end up,” I said.

“It will not feel like home to either of us,” he replied, his tone gently warning, as if I needed reminding of that.

“But if there are people out there… I mean, instead of egg-laying monsters, or sweet-looking devils with tails, then it’ll be better than nothing, won’t it? People are people. If the Infrastructure is truly breaking down, allowing all these timelines to bleed into one another, than we are all going to have get along with each other sooner or later, no matter what we all did to each other in our various histories. We’re all going to have to put the past behind us.”

“It will not be easy,” he acknowledged. “But if two people as unalike as you and I can become friends, then perhaps there is hope. Perhaps we could even become an example to others. We shall have to see, shan’t we?”

“We shall have to see,” I echoed.

I held Muhunnad’s hand as we raced toward the portal, and whatever Heaven had in store for us on the other side.

Alastair Reynolds is a frequent contributor to Interzone and has also sold to Asimov’s Science Fiction , Spectrum SF, and elsewhere. His first novel, Revelation Space , was widely hailed as one of the major SF books of the year; it was quickly followed by Chasm City , Redemption Ark , Absolution Gap , and Century Rain , all big sprawling Space Operas that were big sellers as well, establishing Reynolds as one of the best and most popular new SF writers to enter the field in many years. His other books include a novella collection, Diamond Dogs , Turquoise Days . His most recent books are a novel, Pushing Ice, and two new collections, Galactic North and Zima Blue and Other Stories . Coming up is a new novel, The Prefect . A professional scientist with a Ph.D. in astronomy, he comes from Wales, but lives in the Netherlands, where he works for the European Space Agency.

Reynolds’ work is known for its grand scope, sweep, and scale (in one story, “Galactic North,” a spaceship sets out in pursuit of another in a stern chase that takes thousands of years of time and hundreds of thousands of light-years to complete; in another, “Thousandth Night,” ultrarich immortals embark on a plan that will call for the physical rearrangement of all the stars in the Galaxy. In the hard-hitting and disquieting story that follows, Reynolds shows us a brutal Galactic Empire embattling itself to defend against attacks by other Empires that come not just from elsewhere in the Galaxy, but from other universes altogether!