Charles Sheffield - The Spheres of Heaven

Chan was there, sitting in a swivel seat and staring out at the stars. She had made no plans as to what to do when she found him. She grabbed the back of his chair to slow herself and blurted, “You were a Paradox addict.”

He turned slowly and said in a sleepwalker’s voice, “Yes. I was a Paradox addict.”

“Down on Earth.”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“Forever.” He roused himself. “No, I guess that won’t do as an answer. From my first hit to my last, it was three years, five months and fourteen days. I didn’t know any of that at the time, of course. All the days blended into one.”

“How were you able to stop?”

“The hardest way. I needed money. An addict will do anything to pay for the next shot. One day I robbed the wrong person. He was chief enforcer for the Duke of Bosny. Next thing I knew I was in a labor camp in the Gallimaufries where the drug of preference was Velocil. The guards ran the trade in it, but Paradox and Velocil clash. Take both and you die.”

“What did you do?”

“I died. Or felt like I did. The guards knew I was hooked on Paradox, so they wouldn’t give me Velocil. I guess I ought to have been grateful to them, but I wasn’t. I screamed and howled and begged and prayed. No good. Four years later I was alive, out of the camp, and free of the habit. But you know what? In my dreams, I’m a Paradox addict still.”

It wasn’t the passion in his voice that made Deb shiver. It was the total lack of it.

“Out of the labor camp,” he went on, “and out of a job, too. Who would want anything to do with a man with a Paradox record?”

“Why didn’t you come to—” She checked herself. “What did you do?”

“I went to the man who caught me and put me in the camp. I told him, look, if it wasn’t for you I’d be dead now. It’s your fault that I’m alive, so you owe me a job. He said I had a hell of a nerve. But he seemed amused. He put me on his own staff and I became an enforcer for the Duke of Bosny. I was a good one, too. I knew every trick in the book, and a lot that weren’t there. I’d used them all to support my own habit.”

Deb had sunk to her knees at the side of the chair. “After you got out. Why didn’t you contact me?”

“It had been nearly eight years. Eight years going on forever. Too long.” Chan turned away to stare at the cold stars. Far ahead the rainbow beacon of the Link entry point was visible as a bright point, warning space vehicles to stay away. At last he said, “I did check with a couple of the old team. They told me you were living with someone else. That finished it. I had nothing to offer, and it wouldn’t be fair to contact you. Anyway, it would have made no difference.”

“ Wrong! It would have made a difference to me .”

The feeling that swept through Deb was like nothing she had known in her whole life, a bloodred rage that twisted and tore at her insides. She raised her hand. One blow would break his neck.

He did not see the movement, because he was still staring at nothing. He could not possibly have seen her raised hand. But he said, slowly and thoughtfully, “You know, when I was asked to lead an expedition to the Geyser Swirl, I knew instantly that I would accept. But I didn’t know why. I told myself that it was the chance to do what we had all talked of doing, long ago. Since then I’ve had other thoughts. This mission is so dangerous it sounds like guaranteed suicide. Sane people don’t commit suicide. And only monsters talk their oldest friends into going along to die with them. Have I been building a team? Or have I been luring you and Danny and Chrissie and the others to share my fate?”

He sounded like a zombie, and his tone of utter hopelessness broke Deb. The blood seemed to drain out of her, leaving her weak and faint. She brought her raised hand down on the back of Chan’s head, not violently but gently, touching his hair. “How long before we reach Link entry?”

“About four and a half hours.”

“Then that’s when you’ll find out if you’re a monster. Are you going back to the control room?”

“I don’t think so. The Link transition is the job of the ship’s computer. It’s supposed to be close to omniscient, and close to infallible.”

“So why are we here? What can humans do that it can’t?”

“We can risk human lives. That’s Dag Korin’s job now; mine when we get through the link.”

“Mine too, then. I’ll wait here — if that’s all right with you?” She waited, but there was no word, no nod of acceptance. Finally she went on, “I can tell you one thing right now. No matter what happens when we go through the Link, you haven’t lured anybody here. Not Chrissie, not Tarb, not Danny, not anybody. Every member of the old team, they would rather be here than anywhere else in the universe.”

Still he said nothing.

She added, “And so would I.”

Link network transitions: every one the same, every one different.

Similarities:

* Before a transition can be initiated, coordinates must be provided. One hundred and sixty-eight decimal digits are needed, enough to specify origin and destination to within one meter anywhere in the universe. No exceptions are permitted.

* The matter density within the destination volume must be no greater than that of a thin gas; otherwise, Link transition will not be initiated. Link points on Earth’s surface come very close to that limit.

* Adequate (which is to say, enormous) power must be available at the originating Link point. Travel to the stars will never be cheap. The power for a single interstellar trip eats up the savings of a lifetime. When a large mass is involved, such as that of the Hero’s Return , no private groups can afford the expense. Such Link transitions are the prerogative of wealthy species governments.

Differences:

* Link entry positions are absolute, but Link entry velocities depend on mass. A small ship, such as the Mood Indigo , can enter a link with some latitude in velocity and emerge unscathed. A ship the size of the Hero’s Return must hit the right entry velocity to within millimeters a second.

* Velocity error converts kinetic energy to heat energy upon Link emergence. Miss the entry speed by a few kilometers a second, and your ship will emerge red hot.

* There is no uniformity in Link destinations, and no warning given of their properties. A traveller must learn of any dangers — high temperature, intense gravity field — ahead of time.

* Small fluctuations, believed to be amplified quantum effects, add a random element to the direction of travel on emergence. In the worst possible case, the one-in-a-million shot that no one likes to talk about, emergence never takes place at all. In any event, a ship had better be prepared to make sudden course changes.

That encourages one other permitted variation: the prayers of the crew about to undergo transition can be anything you like. The contribution of prayer to Link transitions is not established — but almost everyone does it.

Zero hour was approaching for the Hero’s Return . The entry point gaped open, a hole in the fabric of spacetime. In the final seconds before transition, every person on board fell silent. Men and women, young or old, believers or atheists, alone or together, outwardly nervous or outwardly confident, vanished into their private worlds.

The final second ticked away. Deb Bisson gripped Chan Dalton’s hand, hard enough to bruise. He felt the pain, and welcomed it.

Time ran out. The great bulk of the Hero’s Return , slowly, sluggishly, as if reluctantly, slid forward to enter the dark eye of the Link.