Roger Allen - The Ring of Charon

On the other hand, Earth was there . She could see it. Whatever the hell had been done, had been done to Earth . Orbital facilities had survived, or not, at random—she had been witness to that. She had a good strong hunch that the Rat wouldn’t be here right now if she had been another hundred meters Moonward from NaPurHab.

And where the hell would the Rat have been? Where was the Moon? Back in the Solar System?

Good God. Where was the Sun ?

She looked out across the Universe. More to the point, where was she ? What was this place? She pushed the thought away and retracted the last of the manipulator arms. Worrying about that sort of thing wasn’t going to get her home alive. She settled back into her console and fired up the navigation system. Working on manual only, doing her own naked-eye navigation, she set to work plotting out her reentry.

The unknown faced her on every side. This was going to be the most dangerous flyback of her life.

But she knew, already, that this was merely a tactical retreat. She would be back, back up here in space, to find out what had happened and why.

Plastered with sweat, half-numb from exhaustion and shock, she prepared her crippled spacecraft for the dangerous ride home, already planning her revenge, the coming day when she faced whatever power it was that moved worlds.

She was happier than she had ever been in her life.

The Caller was delighted. It had expected—or at least hoped for — assistance, in the form of an Anchor. It had never dared to dream the Sphere would send a sophisticated Portal Anchor, let alone new-breed World-eaters. Nor had it ever dared hope that such help might come so fast .

Anchors often arrived swiftly, but Portal Anchors were rarely sent, and periods equivalent to terrestrial years — even decades and centuries — had been known to pass before any material aid was sent through a Portal Anchor .

But even a non-Portal Standard Anchor would have served a vital purpose, of course. A Standard Anchor could provide a hole in space, albeit a smaller one than a full Portal allowed. Anything that could be sent across normal space could be sent through such a hole. Such as radio signals. The Caller had sent its own dataset, over and over, to ensure accurate reception. It received signals back, with the data needed to reestablish sophisticated contact after so many silent eons. In effect, the Sphere and Caller were relearning each other’s archaic dialect.

But now the Caller was receiving a substantive signal, not a mere language lesson. As was standard procedure, the Caller echoed the signal back to demonstrate that it had been received.

That required no thought. But considering the signal did. The Caller examined the message.

And was bathed in fear .

It was a long ride from Pluto to the Moon, no matter how fast the ship. At least it was almost over. They should be landing within an hour or so. Sondra glanced up from her screenful of Moonside news and propaganda and looked across the tiny wardroom at Larry and Raphael. Lot of fun it had been, being cooped up in here with the two of them and Collier, Nenya’s taciturn pilot.

Sondra thought about herself in connection with Raphael and Larry. The rushed flight of the Nenya demonstrated how important the three of them suddenly were, and not just on Pluto. That the Ring was suddenly important off Pluto was demonstrated by the fact that the repairs and upgrades on the Nenya were to be given top priority once they reached the Moon. With half the satellite’s own infrastructure wrecked, that meant something. Sondra had caught a mood in all the messages flitting back and forth: if Larry Chao and the Ring had got them into this mess, then only Larry Chao and the Ring could get them back out .

“Are you sure the charge values are for real?” Larry asked, his slightly muffled voice echoing out from his sleep cabin. He did most of his work in there, in a feeble attempt to give the others some privacy—but his voice still carried. No doubt he was speaking into the radio mike that seemed surgically attached to him these days. He had spent most of the trip arguing with some guy named Lucian Dreyfuss about data on the Earthpoint black hole. At least now they were within reasonable radio range of the Moon. The speed-of-light delays were no longer quite so maddening.

Sondra desperately wanted some real privacy, to get away from the others and be by herself. Too bad the rest of the enormous ship was sealed off, filled with flexible fuel bladders. Only seven compartments were open—the control room, the wardroom, four coffin-sized sleep cabins, and a refresher chamber that provided an utterly unsatisfactory zero-gee shower.

Sixteen days. Sixteen days en route from Pluto to the Moon. At least Larry had his work, sifting through the math and the physics, seeking after answers, solutions.

That was how he dealt with his guilt. So how the hell was she dealing with her own? Without her encouragement and help, Larry wouldn’t have worked up the nerve to do what he had done. Or was that even true? How responsible was she supposed to feel for the cataclysmic and utterly unforeseeable actions of another person?

She sighed and returned to her reading. She had gotten to the Naked Purple’s pronouncement. Blatant nonsense, but at least it was a change of pace from listening to Larry arguing gravity physics.

We proudly proclaim our victory in ridding the Solar Area of the scourge called “Earth .” Sondra frowned. More babble. “What’s the Solar Area?” she asked Dr. Raphael. “I mean, in Purple talk.”

Raphael set down his own book and thought for a moment. He seemed calm and at ease, as if he had found some part of himself on this flight, some part that had long been missing. “I used to know these things. Oh, yes. The Purples disapprove of the term Solar System , because it implies that there is organization and purpose in nature. Chaos is of course the primordial state and attempts to impose order were human attacks on nature. I may not have the logic precisely, but it’s something like that. It’s hard to read more than a sentence from the Purps or the Octals or any of the other outfringers without running into some strange word or verbal construction. I believe you’ll find the reasoning behind most of the odd language is no less tortured than the writing itself. Read some of that out loud, will you? I haven’t heard any of it in years.”

Sondra cleared her throat. “I’ll try, but half of this stuff is in puns and alternate spellings. Probably sounds even more incoherent out loud. Let’s see: ‘For billions of years, an unnatural state of existence has warped the Solar Area, as the entropy-reversing perversion of life and evil-ution has upended the right and natural progression to universal decay. Now, thanks to the Naked Purple Movement, the Solar Area is cleansed of the source of this contagion, and the proper state of nature has been reestablished.

“ ‘Once again, this Purple tech-knowledge-ick-all breakthrough demonstrates the superiority of the Naked Purple way of Wisdom Through Ignorance/ants. When all have learned to ignore the ant-like humyn drive for order and stability, all cultures will be capable of / have such / big feats/feet.

“ ‘But for now, humyns of all genders on all worlds everywhere can begin life anew, out from under the oppressive yoke of Earth’s Cultural Imperialism. The Naked Purple Movement has rendered this great service free of charge, but contributions and recruits to the Pointless Cause are always well-come… ’