Stephen Baxter - Timelike Infinity

The first Interface ship, the Cauchy, had taken a century to bridge fifteen hundred years. The new ship took only half a year of subjective time to loop away from Sol and return; but accelerating at multiples of Earth’s gravity, it had crossed five centuries into the future.

Parz was not a scientist, and — despite his close connection to the project — found much of the physics of wormholes philosophically baffling. But as he had traveled to the Jovian system and had gazed on the slowly turning jewel that was the Qax’s returned icosahedral portal, the essence of the project had seemed very real to him.

On the other side of these misty, gray-blue planes was the future. If the Friends of Wigner had gained advantage by escaping into a past in which no Qax had even heard of humankind, what greater advantage could those future Qax wield? Parz reflected ruefully. They had five centuries of hindsight, five centuries in which the outcome of the struggle between Qax and human had surely been decided one way or the other.

Only a year had passed since the escape of the Friends. Yet already those future Qax had the opportunity to twist events any way they pleased to their own advantage.

"You are pensive," the Governor said, breaking into his thoughts.

"I’m sorry."

"Come," the Qax said, its translator-box voice softly beguiling. "I don’t think either of us would describe the other as a friend, Ambassador. But we have worked closely, and — once — grew to be honest with each other. Tell me what concerns you, while we wait on events."

Parz shrugged. "What an awesome weapon we have delivered into the hands of your successors, five centuries away. Imagine one of the great generals of human history — Bonaparte, for example — able to study, from history texts, the outcome of his greatest battle before even taking the field."

"There is more than one possibility, Jasoft. Such a general might feel rendered helpless by the weight of historic evidence. Many wars are not decided by strokes of military genius — or by the heroism of a few individuals — but by the tides of history. Or, perhaps, the general might even be stricken with remorse, at the suffering and death his ambition had caused; perhaps he would even work to avert his battle."

Parz snorted. "Maybe. Although I can’t imagine any Qax ‘general’ feeling much remorse for human victims of a tyranny or a war, regardless of the outcome. When we learned of the escape of the Friends of Wigner, remember that we both felt mistrust at such awesome power being delivered into the hands of any group, regardless of species. Should we not feel such mistrust of these Qax from the future?"

The Qax laughed softly. "Now perhaps it is you who underestimate us. I am not without admiration for human achievements, baffled though I am sometimes by your motives."

Jasoft peered through his faceplate at the soft, soapy bubbling of the sea fragment hosting the Governor. "For example?"

"The craft that bore away our Interface terminal was manned by humans. The vessel was essentially automatic, of course — and certainly immune to any possibility of mutiny by the human crew — but your experience of centuries of spaceflight persuaded me that there is no better guarantee of the success of a human-built ship than the presence aboard her of human engineers, with their ingenuity and adaptability — both physical and mental. And so we needed a human crew."

"And you found no trouble getting volunteers. Despite the prospects of multiple-gee travel." Parz smiled. "That isn’t so surprising, Governor."

"How so?"

"Not all humans are the same. We are not all as comfortable with our client-race status as—"

"As you, for example, Jasoft?"

"Right." Parz stuck his chin out, feeling his stubbly jowls stretch; he didn’t expect the Qax to read the gesture, but the hell with it. "Correct. Not all humans are like me. Some want to get out of the box the Solar System has become, regardless of the cost. When will humans again be allowed to journey beyond the Solar System? And what’s life for, but to see, to explore, to wonder? Maybe taking away our AS technology was a mistake for you; maybe the renewed cheapness of our lives — a few, paltry decades and then the endless darkness — has made humans more reckless. Harder to control, eh, Governor?"

The Governor laughed. "Perhaps. Well, Parz; we should turn to our business. And how do you feel, now that the Interface is about to come into operation?"

Parz thought back over the long months of waiting after the construction and launch of the Interface. He had maintained a Virtual image of the stationary portal in his quarters throughout that time, listening to endless, baffling commentaries about relativistic time dilation, closed timelike curves, and Cauchy horizons.

The future Qax must have been expecting the visitation from the past, of course. Perhaps some of the Qax alive in Parz’s time would still be conscious and able to remember the launch.

At last the day of the ship’s scheduled return to future Earth — the day on which the portal would begin to function as a time tunnel to the future — had come; and Parz had been joined in his silent vigil beneath Virtuals of the stationary Jovian icosahedron by an unseen congregation of millions. All over the Earth, and through the rest of the Occupied system, humans had watched the twinkling icosahedron with a mixture of fascination and dread.

Then, at last, the bursts of exotic particles from the wormhole terminus…

"I guess," Parz said slowly, "I feel something of what Michael Poole, the builder of the first Interface, must have gone through as he waited for his project to come to fruition." But that first Interface project had, as Parz understood it, been initiated in the hope of filching some knowledge from future generations of mankind — and to test out the science of spacetime and exotic physics — and, Parz guessed, for the sheer, exuberant hell of it. A working time machine, in orbit around Jupiter? If you can build it, why the hell not?

Poole must have anticipated the opening of his wormhole with joy. Not feared it, as Parz had done.

"Yes," the Qax said reflectively. "And now—"

And now the Virtual image of the icosahedron exploded; darkness flecked with gold rained over Parz and he cried out, curled over on himself, cringing.

The Governor was silent; in Parz’s ears there was only the ragged din of his own breath.

After long seconds Parz found the will to raise his head. The Virtual of the portal was still there, with the crack of Jovian light alongside it…

But now, before the portal, hovered a single ship. A bolt of night-darkness, erupted through the blue-gray face of the portal. The surface of the spacetime discontinuity still quivered seconds after the passage, sending distorted echoes of Jupiter’s pink glow over the Governor’s seething globe of Qax ocean.

The ship from the future spread wings like a bird’s, a hundred miles wide. Night-dark canopies loomed over Parz.

"I am awed, Qax," Parz said, his voice a whisper.

"No less I. Parz, the grace of this ship, the use of the sheet-discontinuity drive — all characteristics of Xeelee nightfighter technology."

Xeelee… Parz felt his fear transmute into almost superstitious horror, that suddenly Xeelee might be made aware of the existence of humanity.

"But this is a Qax ship, nevertheless," the Governor said. "I have received call signatures… My successors must fare well in the centuries to come, to gain such an access to Xeelee technology."

"You must be proud," Parz said sourly. His heart still pounded, but already his fear was lapsing into irritation at the Qax’s complacency.

"The wings are actual sheet-discontinuities in spacetime," the Governor babbled on. "Motive power for the ship is provided by a nonlinear shear of spacetime — much as acoustical shock waves will propagate themselves through an atmosphere, once formed. And—"