Empyrion I: The Search for Fierra (10 page)

“Yes.” He stared at her, trying to fix her face firmly in his mind this time.

“Mr. Treet, I won't keep you from your reading. This will only take a moment.” She glanced around the compartment, which in six weeks Treet had managed to make look like the dayroom of an asylum for the criminally untidy.

With her standing there, he suddenly became aware of just how shabby the place looked. “I've been meaning to do some cleaning.”

“It doesn't matter. I wanted to speak to you.”

He waited. She looked at him curiously, full in the face, expectantly, as if there were some formal response he must make before she could continue. “Yes!” he said at last.

“Are you a sympath, Mr. Treet?”

It was a simple question, and Treet had heard the word before, knew what it meant, but her use of it caught him unawares, and for a moment its meaning evaded him. “A sympath?”

“Remote intelligence receptor. Surely, you are familiar—”

“Oh, yes! Yes, I know what it means. It's just that I didn't expect you to ask me that, of all things.” He made an awkward gesture and realized he still had the foam chair before him. He put it down, saying, “No, I'm not a sympath. I've never had the training. Or the inclination for that matter. Why?”

She went on looking at him in that intense, engaging way and then said finally, “Some people are natural adepts and do not know it, Mr. Treet. You could be one of them.” She said this last as if it were a challenge or an indictment, he couldn't decide which.

“I think I'd know, wouldn't I?” He smiled, trying to break through some of the high seriousness of the young woman. She seemed not to notice, but nodded slightly to herself as she backed away a slow step.

“Look, don't go,” he said quickly. “It's a little … I mean, I'd like to get to know you a little better.”

But she was already in the gangway. “No, Mr. Treet,” her voice called back as she disappeared again, “perhaps you
wouldn't
know.”

Orion Treet now had
two things to be deeply disturbed about: wormhole time distortion, and the suggestion—no, the
insinuation
—that he was a sympath without his knowing it. About the former he had every right to be upset, but why the latter should bother him, he couldn't say. Except for the simple fact that he was a man who arranged his life like one of his essays: direct, uncluttered, balanced.

The insane expedition, as he now considered it, removed what little balance he had achieved of late. It had certainly eliminated the delicate equilibrium between penury and pelf. (Although the three million dollars stashed away in his flight kit had theoretically removed penury from the picture, his startling new wealth had yet to produce any tangible effects for him.) Then there was the wormhole: how was it possible to find meaningful direction when at any moment
anything
might happen? The wormhole loomed as a monstrous, undulating question mark on his personal horizon, throwing unforeseen kinks in his ability to direct his fate. And Yarden Talazac's strange insinuation that he might be an unknowing Sympath—in fact, her very presence—had cluttered his life with odd, irreconcilable thoughts and emotions, questions without answers, mysteries without clues.

As before, he said nothing of Yarden's visit to him. And though he wondered what it meant—as he wondered about what their first midnight meeting meant—he did not let on to Pizzle that he knew anything about the passenger in the adjoining stateroom. This silence had its price, for Pizzle was about to stampede him around the bend with his continual badgering: “Let's try to sneak into the ventilator shaft,” or “I'll watch tonight, you watch tomorrow night,” or “We could rig up a camera with a motion detector to photograph the gangway at night.”

Instead, Treet deflected Pizzle's obsession toward a subject of more consequence, at least in his own mind.

“You've read Belthausen,” Treet said as they sat knee-to-knee over Pizzle's Empires console, the flat green grid glowing between them. “What do you think of his time distortion theory?”

Pizzle's rims flashed as he glanced up. “It's a sound theory; no question about it. But then he starts off in pretty safe territory. I mean, distort space and you distort time—that much is elementary.”

“Fine, it's elementary. But doesn't it concern you just a little? We're blasting away into the unknown, and both you and Crocker act as if we're on a holiday excursion to Pismo Beach. Doesn't the prospect of time displacement frighten you at all?”

Pizzle shook his head slowly. “I can't say as it does.” He shrugged. “It's all the same in the end, isn't it?”

“What's all the same?”

“This—space travel. It's always into the unknown, right? And as far as time displacement, what difference does it make?”

“Why, an enormous difference!” Treet exploded in exasperation. “A carking great pile of a difference!”

“How?” Pizzle blinked mildly back at him.

“What?”

“How? How does it make a difference? You can't tell me that whether I arrive today, tomorrow, or a week ago last Thursday is going to make a molecule of difference—not to me, not to the colonists, not to anybody else, including you.” He jabbed a button on the console. “It's your move. Careful, I've got your coastal lowlands mined.”

As much as he hated to admit it, there
was
a microgram of cockeyed logic in what Pizzle said. In essence, it wouldn't make much difference
when
they arrived since their arrival had no field of external objectification, to use Belthausen's unwieldy term—that is, no exact temporal frame of reference.

Their normal frame of reference. Earth's time, would have no bearing on Empyrion time, and no real meaning either, since the two were not contiguous. Any problems posed by a time differential were largely illusory—in the sense that any such problems were merely due to the perception of the individual observer.

Except in the area of communication with Earth. Passing signals back and forth through a space-time displacement tube—another term for wormhole—did complicate matters somewhat, as Cynetics had already discovered. Once into the tube, the signals became subject to whatever quirky laws governed the thing. Time shifts could occur, and probably did, although there was also the distinct possibility signals could pass through virtually unaffected, like arrows through a wind tunnel.

“What about parallel time channels?” asked Treet, intent on pursuing the discussion as far as possible. “Your move.”

“Boy, you
have
been reading that book, eh?” Pizzle lowered his head over the grid. “Just captured one of your frontier base camps. Your turn.” He looked up again. “Okay, what about them?”

“Well, suppose we come out of the wormhole and there's no colony because we've entered a parallel time channel? A channel, let's say, where a colony ship never arrived. We can't reach them because they're on another channel, and there's no way to change channels. What do we do then?”

“First of all, parallel time channels are merely an obscure mathematical possibility at this point.” Pizzle held up his hand as Treet started to object. “But let's say that by some incredible circumstance we
did
end up in a parallel time channel.”

Treet nodded. “Let's say.”

“I imagine Crocker would simply turn right around and we'd go back the way we came. What's so terrible about that?”

Treet hadn't thought of that. Of course—they could just go back. Whatever happened, they could just turn around and hightail it back to Earth. Here he had been upset about persistent time distortions—static futures, variable pasts, parallel time channels, and all the rest—and Pizzle's unshakable common sense had cut through all that with the modest wisdom of a weekend traveler: if we don't like the hotel, we'll pack up and go home.

With something approaching admiration, Treet gazed at his partner across the green grid screen. That scruffy, overlarge head had a brain in it, and a good one. What other talents did Pizzle possess?

“Your capitol is in flames, and your escape routes are cut off,” Pizzle was saying. “Unless you have a secret escape plan, your only chance is surrender. That's the game!”

“Wait! What was that?”

“Your empire is ashes.”

“No, I mean—listen!” Treet cocked his head to one side, and the sound came again. “What's that?”

“That's just an acceleration signal.” Pizzle cleared the screen. “Want to play another game?”

“No.” Treet got up. “I want to find out what that signal is.”

“I told you—” Before Pizzle could finish, the chiming signal changed, becoming louder, more insistent.

“Come on,” said Treet. He entered the gangway and turned toward the cockpit. By the time he reached the flight deck, the signal had become an alarm, a blaring, raucous buzz. Treet tumbled into the cockpit and Pizzle after him. “Is this it? Is it happening?”

Crocker sat frozen over the navigator's instrument panel, his long-billed cap lowered over an orange oval screen. Yellow numbers flashed on the screen, changing to red as he watched. Without looking up he said, “I… don't know yet…”

Treet glanced around at the instrument panel. Several buttons were flashing red, and at least two screens spelled out the word WARNING! in crimson letters across their faces. Fear tugged his muscles taut, but Treet forced himself to remain calm.

Pizzle, standing beside him, whispered, “Could be a meteor field the vipath beam's picked up.”

This was meant, no doubt, as a reassurance, but Treet's mind flashed the image of a million moon-sized chunks of rock hurtling into their tiny fragile craft, smashing it into a smoking tangle of twisted space junk.

“Sweet Julius!” said Crocker, spinning around to face them. “This is it, boys. Event horizon.”

“The wormhole?” said Pizzle. “So soon?”

“We're still six weeks away,” added Treet lamely.

The pilot shook his head, spinning back to his instruments. “Evidently we're in its backyard, and it's coming to meet us.”

“Coming to meet us?” Treet stepped behind the Captain's chair and peered over his shoulder. “What do you mean?”

“Two A.U. and closing fast,” he shot back over his shoulder.

“How fast?”

“You'd better get strapped in.”

“How fast?” Treet demanded, gripping the chair with both hands.

“At the rate of one hundred thousand myms per second. Get back to your compartment and get strapped in—now! Both of you. Get going.”

Treet backed away, reluctant to turn his eyes from the flashing screens. He felt Pizzle's hand on his arm, pulling him away. “Let's go. I switched on the holoscreens—we won't miss a thing.”

They dashed back to their rooms, their feet barely making contact with the deck. Pizzle ducked into his compartment, grinning. “See you on the other end!”

“I sincerely hope so,” muttered Treet, throwing himself onto the couch. His hand smacked the console, and the couch angled into flight attitude. He drew the seat belt over him, and safety harness too, for good measure. He lay back and closed his eyes, trying to compose himself for whatever would happen next, and thought—what about Yarden!

Unhooking the belt and harness, Treet leaped from the couch and dove for the gangway. He reached Yarden's door a split second later and pounded it with both fists. “Yarden! Can you hear me? Open up! It's happening! The wormhole—we're going in! Did you hear? Open up!”

There was no answer. Likely she could not hear him. He pounded harder on the padded surface. “Yarden, open up! It's Treet!”

“Treet!” The overhead speaker barked at him. “Get back in your harness! She'll be all right. Move it!”

“Crocker, she doesn't know!”

“She knows!”

“But—”

“Get back in your harness, Treet!”

With a backward glance at Yarden Talazac's sealed door, Treet hurried to his room and rebelted. He had just snapped the harness buckle closed when the holoscreen before him pulsed with a bright light. Then the cabin lights dimmed, and Treet found himself staring into the mouth of the wormhole.

The wormhole, as viewed
through the 3-D projection of the holovision, appeared as a quivery purple spot in the center of the screen, expanding rapidly, blotting out the light of stars around its spreading rim. It glowed, according to Belthausen, because of something called Cerenkov radiation, which Treet did not pretend to understand. It had to do with the rotation of the Schwarzchild discontinuity exceeding the speed of light, the mechanisms of which Treet also failed to grasp.

He watched with dread fascination as the thing drew swiftly closer. Swelling. Turning.

The wormhole filled the screen, the glowing singularity so violet that needles of pain pierced the retinas. We must be at the very edge of it, thought Treet. We're going in!

Crocker's voice shouted over the sound system. “Brace yourselves! We're … one … two … three … NOW!”

Nothing happened.

This is it? wondered Treet.

Treet closed his eyes, expecting to feel something—a shudder through the ship, a spinning sensation, violent rocking motion, the collapse of the known universe—anything.