Charles Sheffield - Transcendence

“At our destination.” The roller coaster through the twisted structure of the Anfract had done Dulcimer good. The Chism Polypheme sounded cheerful and proud and was no longer sagging in his seat. “There.” He pointed with his middle arm to the main display. “That’s it.”

“But that’s not where we want to go,” Darya protested.

The great slaty eye rolled in her direction. “It may not be where you want to go, but it’s the coordinates that you gave me. They lie right in the middle of that. Since I am opposed to all forms of danger, this is as close as I will take the ship.”

“But what is it?” Julian Graves asked.

“What it looks like.” Dulcimer sounded puzzled. “A set of annular singularities. Isn’t that what you were all expecting?”

It was not what anyone had been expecting. But now its existence made perfect sense.

“The Anfract is tough to enter and hard to navigate around,” Hans Rebka said. “But it has been done, many times, and ships came back to prove it. Yet not one of them reported finding a world like the sightings of Genizee made with high-powered equipment from outside the Anfract. So it stands to reason there has to be some other barrier that stops ships from finding and exploring Genizee. And a set of shielding singularities like this would do it. Enough to scare most people off.”

“Including us,” Darya said. Space travel Rule #1: avoid major singularities; Rule #2: avoid all singularities.

“No chance,” Louis Nenda said. “Not after we dragged all this way.”

Darya stared at him. It was occurring to her, at the least convenient moment, that the reason why Hans Rebka and Louis Nenda got on so badly was not that they were fundamentally different. It was that they were fundamentally the same . Cocky, and competent, and convinced of their own immortality. “But if all those other ships came here and couldn’t get in,” she said, “then why should we be any different?”

“Because we know something they didn’t know,” Rebka said. He and Nenda apparently enjoyed one other thing in common: cast-iron stomachs. The flight into the Anfract that had left Darya weak and nauseated had affected neither one of them.

“The earlier ships didn’t have a good reason to spend a lot of time here,” he went on. “They didn’t expect to find anything special inside, so they didn’t do a systematic search for a way in. But we know there’s something in there.”

“And if it’s the Zardalu cladeworld,” Louis Nenda added, “we also know there has to be a way in and a way out, and it can’t be a too difficult way. All we have to do is find it.”

All we have to do.

Sure. All we have to do is something no exploring ship ever did before. Darya added another item to the list of common characteristics of Rebka and Nenda: irrational optimism. But it made no difference what she thought — already they were getting down to details.

“Can’t take the Erebus ,” Rebka was saying. “That’s our lifeline home.”

“ And it can’t even land,” Nenda added. His glance at Julian Graves could not be missed.

“On the first look that’s no problem,” Rebka said. “Let’s agree to one thing, before we go any further: whatever and whoever goes, no one even thinks of landing. If there’s planets down there, you take a good look from a safe distance. Then you come back here and report. As for whether the ship we use is the Indulgence or the seedship, I vote seedship — it’s smaller and more agile.” He paused. “And more expendable.”

“And talking of lifelines,” Nenda added, “Atvar H’sial points out that even the Erebus is not much use without Dulcimer to pilot it. He ought to stay outside, too—”

“He certainly ought,” Dulcimer said. The Polypheme was rolling his eye nervously at the flickering sphere outside. He apparently did not like the look of it.

“ — so who flies the seedship and looks for a way in past the singularities?” Nenda finished.

“I do,” said Rebka.

“But I am most expendable .” J’merlia spoke for the first time since they entered the Anfract.

“Kallik and I know the Anfract internal geometry best,” Darya said.

“But I can maintain the most detailed record of events,” said E.C. Tally.

Deadlock. Everyone except Dulcimer seemed determined to be on the seedship, which held, at a squeeze, four or five. The argument went on until Julian Graves, who had so far said nothing, shouted everyone down in his hoarse, cracking bass. “Quiet! I will make the assignment. Let me remind all of you that the Erebus is my ship, and that I organized this expedition.”

It’s my bat, Darya thought. And it’s my ball, and if you don’t go along with my rules you can’t play. My god, that’s what it is to them. They’re all crazy, and to them it’s just a game .

“Captain Rebka, Louis Nenda, Atvar H’sial, J’merlia, and Kallik will fly on the seedship,” Graves went on. He glared the group to silence. “And Dulcimer, Professor Lang, and E.C. Tally will stay on the Erebus .” He paused. “And I — I must stay here also.”

There was a curious diffidence and uneasiness in his last words.

“But I think—” Darya began.

“I know you do.” Graves cut her off. “You want to go. But someone has to stay.”

That had not been Darya’s point. She was going to say that it was asking for trouble, putting Rebka and Nenda together in one group. She glanced across at the two men, but Rebka was distracted, staring in puzzlement at Graves. Julian Graves himself, with the uncanny empathy of a councilor, somehow picked up Darya’s thought and read it correctly.

“We may need several individuals oriented to fast action on the seedship,” he said. “However, to avoid potential conflicts let it be clear that Captain Rebka will lead that group unless he becomes incapacitated. In which case Louis Nenda will take over.”

Darya half expected Nenda to flare up, but all he did was shrug and say thoughtfully, “Good thinkin’. It’s about time the action group had somethin’ to do. Keep the academic types all together back here, an’ mebbe the rest of us—”

“ Academic types! Of all the nerve…” After the last year, Darya found such a description of herself totally ludicrous. And then she saw that Nenda was grinning at the way she had taken the bait.

“You may get your chance anyway, Darya,” Hans Rebka said. “Once we know the way in we’ll relay it back to you. Keep the Indulgence ready in case we have problems and need you to come through and collect us. But don’t start worrying until you haven’t heard from us in three days. We may need that long before we can send you a drone.”

He started to lead the seedship group out of the control chamber. “One other thing.” He turned back as he reached the exit. “Keep the Erebus engines powered up, too, all the time, and be ready to leave. And if you get a call from us and we tell you to run for it, don’t try to argue with us or wait to hear details. Go. Get out of the Anfract and into free-space, as fast as you can.”

Dulcimer was coiled in the seat next to Darya. He turned his slate-gray monocular to her. “Fly away and leave them? I can see that there may be perils for the seedship in passing through the singularities — especially without the services of the spiral arm’s master pilot. But what can they be expecting to find within the singularities, dangerous to us back here on the Erebus ?”

“Zardalu.” Darya returned the stare. “You still don’t believe they’re real, do you, even after everything we’ve told you? They are, though. Cheer up, Dulcimer. Once we find them, according to your contract you’re entitled to twelve percent.”